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I  SMILED  AT  MYSELF  AT  THE  SIGHT  OF  ALL  THIS  MONEY.  '  OH,  DRUG,'  SAID 
I,  ALOUD,  'what  ART  THOU  GOOD  FOR?  THOU  ART  NOT  WORTH  TO  ME, 
NO,    NOT     THE     TAKING    OFF     THE    GROUND.  ONE     OF     THESE     KNIVES     IS 

WORTH    ALL   THIS    HEAP.'" Page   9. 


/*    'i\\'    1 


iaic3 


(/ 


ROBIISON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY; 


OR,  THE 


REMARKABLE  FmANCIAL  FORTUNES  AND  MISFORTUNES 
OF  A  REMOTE  ISLAND  COMMUNITY. 


By  DAVID  A.  WELLS, 

LATE  U.  3.  SPECIAL   COMMISSIONER  OF  EEVENUE. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATION'S  BY  THOMAS  NAST. 


"It  requires  a  great  deal  of  philosophy  to  observe  once  what  may  be  seen 
every  day." — Rousseau. 


NEW    YORK: 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS,    PUBLISHERS, 

FEANKLIN     SQUAEK. 

1876. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1876,  by 

Harper    &    Brothers, 

In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


UNiVERi^rry  i.v  •:at,!FORN] 

SANTA  BARBAUA 


PREFACE. 


The  origin  of  this  little  book  is  as  follows :  Some  months 
ago,  the  expediency  was  suggested  to  the  author,  by  certain 
prominent  friends  of  hard  money  in  this  country,  of  preparing 
for  popular  reading — and  possibly  for  political  campaign  pur- 
poses— a  little  tract,  or  essay,  in  which  the  elementary  princi- 
ples underlying  the  important  subjects  of  money  and  currency 
should  be  presented  and  illustrated  from  the  simplest  ABC 
stand-point.  That  such  a  work  was  desirable,  and  that  none 
of  the  very  great  number  of  speeches  and  essays  already  pub- 
lished on  these  topics  in  all  respects  answered  the  existing  re- 
(piirement,  was  admitted ;  but  how  to  invest  subjects,  so  often 
discussed,  and  so  commonly  regarded  as  dry  and  abstract, 
with  sufficient  new  interest  to  render  them  at  once  attractive 
and  intelligible  to  those  whose  tastes  disincline  them  to  close 
reasoning  and  investigation,  was  a  matter  not  easy  to  deter- 


mme. 


At  last  the  old  idea — recognized  in  fables,  allegories,  and 
parables — of  making  a  story  the  medium  for  communicating 


6  PEEFACE. 

instruction,  suggested  itself ;  and,  in  accordance  with  the  sug- 
gestion, a  remote  island  communitv  has  been  imagined,  in 
which,  startincr  from  conditions  but  one  remove  from  barba- 
rism,  but  gradually  rising  to  a  high  degree  of  ciyibzation,  the 
progress,  the  use,  and  the  abuse  of  the  instrumentalities  and 
mechanism  of  excliano;e — throuo-h  barter,  money,  and  curren- 
cj — have  been  traced  consecutively;  and  the  effect  of  the 
application  of  not  a  few  of  the  most  popular  fiscal  recom- 
mendations and  theories  of  the  day  practically  worked  out 
and  recorded.  And,  in  carrvins;  out  this  scheme,  the  reader 
will  not  fail  to  perceive,  by  reference  to  the  marginal  notes 
accompanying  the  text,  that  hardly  an  absurdity  in  reference 
to  exchan2:e,  monev,  or  currency  can  be  imagined,  which  some- 
where  and  at  some  time  has  not  had  its  exact  counterpart  in 
actual  history  or  experience. 

If  any  apology  for  the  objects  designed  or  the  course  pur- 
sued is  needed,  the  author  thinks  he  finds  it  in  the  precedent 
established  by  the  illustrious  Geoffrey  Crayon,  Gent.,  who,  in 
the  introduction  to  his  "  Tales  of  a  Traveler,"  thus  happily  sets 
forth  the  special  advantage  which  accrues  from  the  proper  em- 
ployment of  a  story  as  a  means  of  communicating  informa- 
tion. "'  I  am  not,"  he  says, "  for  those  barefaced  tales  which 
carry  their  moral  on  their  surface,  staring  one  in  the  face;  on 
the  contrary,  I  have  often  hid  my  moral  from  sight,  and  dis- 
guised it  as  much  as  possible  by  sweets  and  spices ;  so  that 
while  the  simple  reader  is  listening  with  open  mouth  to  a 
ghost  or  love  story,  he  may  have  a  bolus  of  sound  morality 
popped  down  his  throat,  and  be  never  the  wiser  for  the 
fraud." 

Whether  in  "  Eobinson  Crusoe's  Money "  the  author  shall 
succeed  in  inducino-  his  fellow-countrymen — to  whom  the  or- 
dinary  currency  medicine  is  becoming  distasteful — to  swallow 
without  wry  faces  the  same  dose  sugar-coated,  remains  to  be 
determined. 

Norwich,  Conn.,  January,  1876. 


CONTENTSi 


CHAPTER  I.  PAGE 

XHE  THREE  GREAT  BAGS  OF  MONEY 11 

CHAPTER  II. 

A  NEW  SOCIAL  ORDER  OF  THINGS 13 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  PERIOD   OF  BARTER 15 

CHAPTER  IV. 

HOW  THEY  INVENTED  MONEY. 20 

CHAPTER  V. 

HOW   THE    PEOPLE    ON    THE    ISLAND   AND   ELSEWHERE    LEARNED   WIS- 
DOM      26 

CHAPTER  VI. 

GOLD,  AND  HOW  THEY  CAME  TO   USE  IT 38 

CHAPTER  VII. 

HOW  THE  ISLANDERS  DETERMINED  TO   BE  AN  HONEST  AND  FREE  PEO- 
PLE       50 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

HOW   THE    PEOPLE    ON   THE    ISLAND   CAME    TO    USE    CURRENCY  IN   THE 
PLACE  OF  MONEY 55 

CHAPTER  IX. 

WAR  WITH  THE   CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME   OF   IT 60 


8  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  X.  PAOK 

AFTER  THE  WAR 72 

CHAPTER  XI. 

THE   NEW  MILLENNIUIVi. 83 

CHAPTER  Xn. 

GETTING  SOBER 108 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 
"l  SMILED  AT  MYSELF  AT  THE  SIGHT  OF  ALL  THIS  MONET.   '  OH,  DEUG,' 

SAID  I,  ALOUD,  '  WHAT  ART  THOU  GOOD  FOR  ?   THOU  ART  NOT  WORTH 

TO  ME,  NO,  NOT  THE  TAKING  OFF  THE  GROUND.   ONE  OF  THESE  KNIVES 

IS  WORTH  ALL  THIS  HEAP ' " Frofitispiece 

THE    REPRESENTATIVES    OF   LABOR    AND   THE    REPRESENTATIVES    OF   CAPITAL 

PROPOSING    TO    HAVE    A    DIFFERENCE 18 

THEN   THE   BUBBLE   BURST;     STOCK   COMPANIES   ALL   FAILED 29 

THE    SURVIVAL    OF    THE    FITTEST 52 

A   SHADOW   IS   NOT   A   SUBSTANCE 58 

ONE    WAT   OF    BLOWING   A    DISSATISFIED    PARTY    OUT    OF    EXISTENCE 70 

THIS   SCHEME  ACCORDINGLT  FOUND  JIANT  OPPONENTS,  WHO  ALLEGED   THAT, 

IP   IT   WERE    CARRIED    OUT,    IT    WOULD    DEPRIVE    THEM    OF   MONET,   AND 

CONSEQUENTLY  OF  INSTRUMENTALITIES    FOR  MAKING  THEIR   EXCHANGES  75 

"an  instrument   of  military  NECESSITT,  once   created,  REMAINS   SUCH 

AN   INSTRUMENTALITT  FOR  CONTINUED  USE   FOR  ALL  TIME  ;    NO   MATTER 

WHO    IT   MAT    HIT,  OR   AVHAT    PROPERTT    IT    MAY    DESTROY" 81 

THE   DOCTORS   PRESCRIBE   CONTINUED   LOW   (fISCAl)   DIET 85 

THE    ARAB   AND    THE    CAMEL 92 

MILK-TICKETS    FOR    BABIES,  IN    PLACE    OP    MILK 97 

AN   INFLATION    LOOK   AHEAD 102 

INCREASING   THE    VOLUME    OF    THE    CURRENCY lOG 

THE   HUNGRY   DOG   AND  THE   SHADOW 115 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  THKEE  GREAT  BAGS  OF  MONEY. 

All  who  have  read  "  Robinson  Crusoe"  (and  who  has  not  ?) 
will  remember  the  circumstance  of  his  opening,  some  time 
after  he  had  become  domiciled  on  his  desolate  island,  one 
of  the  chests  that  had  come  to  him  from  the  ship.  In  it  he 
found  pins,  needles  and  thread,  a  pair  of  large  scissors,  "  ten 
or  a  dozen  good  knives,"  some  cloth,  about  a  dozen  and  a  half 
of  white  linen  handkerchiefs  concerning  which  he  remarks, 
"They  were  exceedingly  refreshing  to  wipe  my  face  on  a 
warm  day ;"  and,  finally,  hidden  away  in  the  till  of  the  chest, 
"  three  great  hags  of  money — gold  as  well  as  silver." 

The  finding  of  all  these  articles — the  money  excepted — it 
will  be  further  remembered,  greatly  delighted  the  heart  of 
Crusoe ;  inasmuch  as  they  increased  his  store  of  useful  things, 
and  therefore  increased  his  comfort  and  happiness.  But  in 
respect  to  the  money  the  case  was  entirely  difi^erent.  It  was 
a  thing  to  him,  under  the  circumstances,  absolutely  worthless, 
and  over  its  presence  and  finding  he  soliloquized  as  follows : 
"  I  smiled  at  myself  at  the  sight  of  all  this  money.  '  Oh, 
drug !'  said  I,  aloud,  '  what  art  thou  good  for  ?  Thou  art  not 
worth  to  me,  no,  not  the  taking  off  the  ground.     One  of  these 


13  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

knives  is  worth  all  this  heap.  Nay,  I  would  give  it  all  for  a 
gross  of  tobacco-pipes ;  for  sixpenny- worth  of  turnip  and  car- 
rot seed  from  England ;  or  for  a  handful  of  pease  and  beans, 
and  a  bottle  of  ink.' " 

In  introducing  this  episode  in  the  life  of  his  hero,  noth- 
ing was  probably  further  from  the  thought  of  the  author,  De 
Foe,  than  the  intent  to  give  his  readers  a  lesson  in  political 
economy.  And  yet  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  an  illustra- 
tion which  conveys  in  so  simple  a  manner  to  him  who  re- 
flects upon  it  so  much  of  information  in  respect  to  the  nature 
of  that  which  is  popularly  termed  '•'"wealth  f  or  so  good  a 
basis  for  reasoning  correctly  in  respect  to  the  origin  and 
function  of  that  which  we  call "  moneyP  And  in  such  rea- 
soning, the  truth  of  the  following  propositions  is  too  evident 
to  require  demonstration : 

1st.  The  pins  and  needles,  the  scissors,  knives,  and  cloth 
were  of  great  titility  to  Kobinson  Crusoe,  because  their  posses- 
sion satisfied  a  great  desire  on  his  part  to  have  them,  and 
greatly  increased  his  comfort  and  happiness. 

2d.  Possessing  utility,  they  nevertheless  possessed  no  ex- 
changeable value.,  because  they  could  not  be  bought  or  sold, 
or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  exchanged  with  any  body  for  any 
thing. 

3d.  They  had,  moreover,  no  price,  for  they  had  no  purchas- 
ing power  which  could  be  expressed  as  money. 

4th.  The  money,  which  is  popularly  regarded  as  the  symbol 
and  the  concentration  of  all  wealth,  had,  under  the  circum- 
stances, neither  utilit}^,  value,  nor  price.  It  could  not  be  eaten, 
drunk,  worn,  used  as  a  tool,  or  exchanged  with  any  body  for 
any  thing,  and  fully  merited  the  appellation  which  Crusoe  in 
another  place  gives  it,  of  "  sorry,  worthless  sttiffP 

Finally,  the  pins,  needles,  knives,  cloth,  and  scissors  were 


THE  NEW  FAMILY.  13 

all  capital  to  Robinson  Crusoe,  because  they  were  all  iiistru- 
Hientalities  capable  of  being  used  to  produce  something  addi- 
tional, to  him  useful  or  desirable.  The  money  was  not  capi- 
tal, under  the  circumstances,  because  it  could  not  be  used  to 
produce  any  thing. 

Starting,  then,  with  a  condition  of  tilings  on  the  island  in 
which  money  had  clearly  neither  utility  nor  value,  let  us  next 
consider  under  what  change  of  domestic  circumstances  it 
could  become  useful,  acquire  value,  become  an  object  of  ex- 
change, and  constitute  a  standard  for  establishing  prices. 


CHAPTER  II. 

A  NEW  SOCIAL  ORDER  OF  THINGS. 

The  first  person  that  came  to  join  Robinson  Crusoe  on  his 
island  was  Friday,  and  next,  Friday's  father.  But  even  with 
this  increase  of  numbers  there  was  still  no  use  for  the  money, 
inasmuch  as  the  three  constituted  but  one  family,  the  mem- 
bers of  which  labored  and  shared  all  useful  things  they  ac- 
quired in  common,  and  made  no  exchanges.  But  when  Will 
Atkins  and  the  English  sailors  came,  and  the  population  of 
the  island,  we  may  suppose,  was  largely  and  permanently  in- 
creased, a  new  social  order  of  things  became  inevitable.  In- 
compatibility of  taste  and  temper,  and  a  natural  desire  for 
personal  independence,  soon  made  it  impossible  for  all  to  live 
and  share  in  common  as  one  family.  And  self-interest  also 
soon  taught,  that,  in  order  that  the  quantity  of  useful  things 
available  for  the  new  community  as  a  whole  might  be  in- 
creased, and  their  quality  perfected,  it  was  desirable,  that,  in- 
stead of  each  man  endeavoring  to  supply  all  his  own  wants, 


14r  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY.' 

and  for  this  purpose  following  irregularly  the  business  of  a 
carpenter,  baker,  tailor,  mason,  and  the  like,  it  was  best  for 
each  man  to  pursue  but  one  occupation,  and,  making  himself 
skilled  in  it,  procure  the  things  which  he  himself  did  not  pro- 
duce, and  which  he  might  need,  by  exchanging  his  own  prod- 
ucts or  services  for  the  products  or  services  of  some  other 
man.  They  saw  instinctively  that  Robinson  Crusoe,  although 
originally  civilized,  would,  if  he  had  remained  alone  on  the 
island,  have  inevitably  become  a  pure  savage,  and  simply 
because  he  was  alone,  and  could  make  no  exchanges.  For 
a  time,  the  things  which  he  obtained  from  the  wreck  raised 
him  above  this  condition  ;  for  what  the  ship  brought  him — the 
knives,  axes,  guns,  cloth,  etc. — were  capital,  or  the  accumulated 
labor  of  other  men.  But  if  the  ship  had  given  him  nothing, 
he  would  have  had  to  make  every  thing  for  himself —  "  his 
hat,  his  garments,  his  feet-covering,  his  bread,  his  meat  with 
bow  and  arrows,  his  house  by  blows  of  his  hatchet,  his  hatchet 
by  blows  of  his  hammer,  his  hammer  heaven  knows  how  " — 
and  become  a  barbarian  in  spite  of  himself,  because  all  his 
effort  would  have  been  required,  and  would  have  only  sufficed, 
to  insure  him  a  bare  subsistence. 

Systematic  division  of  labor  and  the  exchange  of  products 
and  services  thus,  for  the  first  time  on  the  island,  came  in,  and 
constituted  a  part  of  the  perfected  machinery  of  production, 
or  the  means  of  getting  a  living.  And  it  is  also  to  be  here 
noted,  that,  because  commodities  and  services  now  for  the  first 
time  became  exchangeable,  they  also  for  the  first  time  acquired 
the  attribute  which  we  call  value. 


THE  PERIOD   OF  BARTER.  '  15 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  PERIOD  OF  BARTER. 

All  exchanges  must,  however,  in  the  first  instance,  have 
been  made  directly,  or,  as  we  term  it,  by  harter;  so.  much  of 
one  commodity  or  service  being  given  for  so  much  of  some 
other  commodity  or  service — corn  for  cloth,  furs  and  skins  for 
knives  or  tobacco,  so  much  labor  in  building  a  house  for  so 
much  skill  in  constructing  a  canoe.  But  in  all  this  method 
of  exchanging,  which,  while  it  is  the  most  ancient,  is  also  one 
which  still  extensively  prevails  in  even  the  most  civilized  so- 
cieties, there  was  no  place  for  the  use  or  intervention  of  mon- 
ey ;  and  consequently,  also,  there  was  no  such  thing  as  price ; 
for  price,  as  before  stated,  is  the  purchasing  power  of  any 
commodity  or  service  expressed  in  money. 

But  the  people  on  Robinson  Crusoe  Island  soon  found  out 
by  experience  that  there  was  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  carry- 
ing on  all  exchanges  according  to  the  principle  of  direct  bar- 
ter, so  serious  in  its  nature  as  to  constitute,  unless  removed,  a 
complete  bar  to  any  further  considerable  progress  in  civiliza- 
tion and  social  development.  And  the  discovery  happened 
somewhat  in  this  wise : 

Twist,  who  was  a  tailor,  and  had  made  a  coat,  discovered 
all  at  once  that  he  w^as  out  of  bread ;  and  being  hungry,  sus- 
pended work,  and  went  in  search  of  Needum,  the  baker,  to 
effect  an  exchange.  He  found  him  without  difficulty,  just 
heating  his  oven,  and  with  plenty  of  bread  to  dispose  of ;  but 
as  the  baker  had  all  the  coats  he  wanted,  he  declined  to  trade. 


16  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY.       * 

Needum,  however,  kindly  informed  Twist  that  if  any  fellow 
should  call  with  any  surplus  grain  or  flour,  he  (Needum)  would 
be  most  happy  to  supply  him  with  all  the  bread  he  needed 
in  exchange ;  but  as  the  tailor  was  neither  a  farmer  nor  a 
miller,  and  had  neither  of  these  articles,  he  (Twist)  set  off  for 
the  other  end  of  the  island,  where  there  was  another  baker,  to 
see  how  the  latter  was  situated  in  respect  to  garments.  On 
his  way,  Twist  was  overtaken  by  Pecks,  the  mason,  who  had 
no  coat,  and,  wanting  the  very  garment  which  Twist  had  been 
making,  had  stopped  work  on  a  stone  wall  and  gone  in  search 
of  the  tailor,  to  whom  he  proposed  to  exchange  the  coat  for  a 
new  chimney.  But  as  Twist  had  already  two  chimneys  to  his 
house,  and  nothing  to  cook,  and  didn't  want  another  chimney, 
the  mason  was  as  unsuccessful  in  his  effort  to  trade  with  the 
tailor  as  the  tailor  had  been  just  before  with  the  baker.  At 
last,  after  much  vexatious  traveling  about,  involving  great 
w^aste  of  time  and  labor,  Twist  found  a  baker  who  wanted  to 
exchange  bread  for  the  coat,  and  Pecks  a  tailor  who  would 
give  a  coat  for  a  chimney ;  Needum  having,  in  the  mean  time, 
shut  up  his  bakery  and  gone  in  search  of  Diggs,  the  farmer, 
who  was  willing  to  supply  grain  for  bread.  But  when  all 
these  different  persons,  each  desirous  of  exchanging  his  special 
products  or  services,  had  been  found,  and  had  come  together, 
a  new  perplexity  at  once  made  its  appearance,  and  one  so  em- 
barrassing as  to  cause  each  man  seriously  to  consider  whether 
it  were  not  better  to  return  home  and  endeavor  to  produce  ev- 
ery thing  for  himself,  rather  than  attempt  to  exchange  any 
thing.  "  For  how,"  said  they  all,  "  is  the  comparative  value 
of  our  different  commodities  and  services  which  we  propose  to 
exchange  to  be  ascertained  V  "  How  can  I  know,"  said  Twist, 
"  how  many  loaves  I  ought  to  receive  for  my  coat  V  "  Or  I," 
said  Pecks,  "  find  out  how  high  and  broad  a  chimney  I  ought 


THE  PERIOD   OF  BARTER.  17 

to  make  for  my  garment  ?"  Diggs,  furthermore,  got  up  a  lit- 
tle private  dispute  of  his  own  with  Needura,  growing  out  of 
the  circumstance  that  the  latter  wanted  to  make  his  entire 
payment  in  bread  to  the  former  at  once ;  while  Diggs,  who 
did  not  relish  the  idea  of  living  on  stale  and  possibly  moldy 
bread  for  an  indefinite  length  of  time,  wanted  pay  for  his 
grain,  from  the  baker,  at  the  rate  of  one  fi*esh  loaf  per  day. 
As  for  poor  Twist,  he  had  become  by  this  time  so  humble 
through  hunger  that  he  had  not  the  heart  to  object  to  the 
proposition  to  take  a  cart-load  of  bread  at  once  in  exchange 
for  his  coat,  although  his  house  was  so  small  that  he  knew  he 
would  have  to  store  part  of  his  "pay"  on  the  roof,  where  it 
would  be  certain  to  be  eaten  by  others  than  his  own  family. 

There  was  another  incident  which  happened  about  this 
time  which  made  much  talk  among  the  island  community. 
A  man  who  had  nothing  to  sell  but  his  labor  had  been  em- 
ployed to  load  a  vessel  with  coal — a  vein  of  which  had  been 
discovered ;  and,  after  working  faithfully  all  day,  had  received 
in  pay  for  his  services  a  ton  of  coal.  But  as  it  was  meat, 
drink,  and  lodging,  and  not  coal  (although  the  latter  was  great- 
ly needed  for  some  purposes),  which  the  laborer  wanted,  there 
was  nothing  left  for  the  laborer  to  do  but  to  attempt  to  ex- 
change his  coal,  and  that,  too,  as  soon  as  possible,  in  order  to 
satisfy  his  immediate  necessities.  Being  too  poor  to  hire  a 
horse  and  cart,  he  therefore  borrowed  a  wheelbarrow,  and,  fill- 
ing it  with  coal,  went  in  search  of  persons  who  had  a  surplus 
of  meat,  drink,  and  lodgings  to  dispose  of.  But  all  of  them 
happened  to  have  all  the  coal  they  wanted;  and  morning 
found  the  laborer  still  trundling  through  the  streets  his  most 
useful  commodity  unexchanged,  and  ready  to  sink  with  hunger 
and  exposure.  A  like  experience  befell  also  the  journeyman 
butcher,  blacksmith,  carpenter,  and  dry  -  goods  clerk,  who  re- 

2 


18 


BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


ceived  for  their  day's  labor  respectively  a  sheep-skin,  a  dozen 
horse-shoes,  a  piece  of  pine  timber,  and  two  yards  of  red  flan- 
nel. All  were  in  no  condition,  through  bodily  exhaustion,  to 
resume  work  on  the  next  day;  and  all  also  clearly  saw  that 
their  condition  would  not  have  been  much  improved,  if  each 
had  received  an  entire  payment  in  either  meat,  drink,  or  lodg 
ing,  in  place  of  coal,  skin,  lumber,  horseshoes,  or  cloth. 


THE  KEPRESENTATIVES  OF  LABOR  AND  THE  REPRESENTATIVES  OF  CAPITAL 
PROPOSING  TO  HAVE  A  DIFFERENCE. 


THE  PERIOD   OF  BARTER.  19 

The  laborers,  therefore,  held  a  meeting,  and  at  once  resolved : 
"  That  whereas  it  was  evident  that  the  system  of  paying  for 
labor  with  a  portion  of  the  commodity  which  each  laborer  f)ro- 
diiced  would  necessitate  as  much  time  and  labor  to  make  their 
wages  serviceable  to  their  wants  as  was  required  in  the  first 
instance  to  earn  said  wages ;  therefore,  it  was  but  right  and 
proper  that  the  employers  should  allow  the  laborers  to  use  half 
of  the  whole  time  for  which  they  were  paid,  for  the  purpose 
of  rendering  their  wages  wholly  available  for  their  immediate 
necessities."  But  to  this  the  employers  rejoined  that  such  an 
agreement  would  be  equivalent  not  only  to  doubling  the  pro- 
portion of  wages  to  direct  production,  but  also  to  impairing,  to 
the  extent  of  one-half,  the  effectiveness  of  all  labor  engaged  in 
production,  thereby  increasing  scarcity,  diminishing  abundance, 
and  rendering  further  advance  in  material  development  ex- 
ceedingly slow,  if  not  altogether  impossible.  For  a  time, 
therefore,  there  was  a  prospect  of  a  very  serious  difficulty  be- 
tween the  representatives  of  labor  and  the  representatives  of 
capital ;  resulting,  as  is  always  the  case,  in  immense  losses, 
not  only  to  those  directly  concerned,  but  to  the  whole  com- 
munity. 


20  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


CHAPTEE  lY. 

HOW  THEY  INVENTED  MONEY. 

The  people  on  the  island — both  laborers  and  employers — 
were,  however,  fully  agreed  that  life  was  too  short  to  waste 
a  good  part  of  it  in  a  game  of  "  blindman's-buff  "  on  a  large 
scale — for  such  this  attempt  to  conduct  exchanges  on  a  basis 
of  direct  barter  substantially  was  ;*  but  they  nevertheless  also 
clearly  perceived  that  the  game  would  continue  to  be  played, 
to  the  interruption  of  all  material  progress,  unless  some  other 
method  of  exchanging  could  be  devised  and  adopted.  Under 
the  guidance,  therefore,  as  it  were,  of  instinct  (Robinson  Cru- 
soe encouraging),  and  without  any  enactment  of  law,  Twist, 
Needura,  Pecks,  Diggs,  Fridaj^,  Friday's  father.  Will  Atkins, 
and  every  body  else,  by  common  consent,  agreed  to  select  and 

*  That  the  inconveniences  experienced  by  a  community  attempting  to 
conduct  its  exchanges  exclusively  by  pure  and  direct  barter  as  here  depict- 
ed, are  not  only  not  imaginary,  but  have  their  exact  counterpart  in  the 
present  every-day  experiences  of  countries  of  great  geographical  area  and 
population,  is  proved  by  the  testimony  of  Earth,  Burton,  and  other  recent 
travelers  in  Eastern  Africa.  Thus  Barth,  for  example,  says  (see  "  Travels," 
vol.  i.,  p.  568 ;  vol.  iii.,  p.  203)  that  he  was  repeatedly  prevented  from  buying 
what  he  absolutely  needed — com,  rice,  etc. — because  he  did  not  have,  and 
could  not  get,  what  the  people  wanted  in  exchange ;  and,  again  (vol.  ii.,  p. 
51),  he  states  that  so  great  was  the  difficulty  of  getting  things  in  some  of 
the  African  towns  which  he  visited,  in  consequence  of  the  people  having 
no  general  medium  of  exchange,  that  his  servants  would  often  return  from 
their  purchasing  expeditions  in  a  state  of  the  utmost  exhaustion. 


HOW  THEY  INVENTED  MONEY.  21 

adopt  some  single  commodity  which  all  should  agree  to  take 
in  exchange  for  whatever  of  products  or  services  they  might 
have  to  dispose  of;  so  that  whenever  any  one  had  any  thing 
to  exchange,  he  might  first  exchange  it  for  this  commodity, 
whatever  it  might  be,  and  then  with  such  intermediate  object 
purchase  at  such  times  and  places,  and  in  such  proportions  as 
he  might  desire,  whatever  he  might  need.  And  the  moment 
this  was  done,  civilization  on  the  island  took  a  long  step  for- 
ward, and  the  first  great  embarrassment  growing  out  of  the 
attempt  to  exchange  exclusively  by  direct  barter  was  removed. 
The  tailor  was  no  longer  in  danger  of  starving;  the  mason 
had  no  longer  any  anxiety  about  procuring  clothing,  and  the 
laborer  received  as  pay  for  his  labor  something  which  gave 
him  an  equivalent  in  meat,  drink,  lodging,  and  other  necessi- 
ties which  he  might  need,  without  trouble ;  every  man  giving 
freely  of  his  goods  or  services  for  the  intermediate  object, 
because  he  knew  that  every  other  person  desirous  of  exchang- 
ing would  be  willino;  to  do  the  same. 

Again :  the  selection  of  some  commodity  or  article,  and 
the  investing  it  by  common  consent  with  a  universal  and 
comparatively  unvarying  purchasing  power,  also  solved  the  sec- 
ond perplexity,  inasmuch  as  it  provided  a  measure  or  stand- 
ard, for  ascertaining  the  comparative  value  or  purchasing  pow- 
er of  every  other  exchangeable  commodity  or  service ;  and  in 
precisely  the  same  manner  as  the  length  or  weight  of  any 
thing  is  ascertained,  i.  e.,  by  comparing  it  with  some  other 
thing  which  the  community  have  universally  agreed  to  recog- 
nize as  a  standard  of  length  or  weight — as,  for  example,  the 
rod  of  wood  which  we  call  a  yard-stick,  or  a  piece  of  metal 
which  is  termed  a  pound.  "  My  loaves  are  each  worth  ten 
pieces  of  the  intermediate  commodity,"  said  Needum,  the 
baker!     "My  coat,"  rejoined  Twist,  the  tailor,  "is  worth  a 


22  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

thousand  pieces !"  The  terms  of  fair  exchange  between  the 
baker  and  the  tailor  would  therefore  have  been  one  hundred 
loaves  for  one  coat. 


The  general  name  given  to  the  commodities  or  articles 
which  the  people  of  different  countries  imiversally  accept  in 
exchange,  as  the  equivalent  for  all  other  commodities  or  serv- 
ices, and  as  the  measure  of  values,  is  Tnoney. 

The  commodities  or  articles  which  have  been  selected  by 
men  at  various  times  and  places  to  serve  as  this  universal 
equivalent,  intermediate  agent,  or  medium  for  facilitating  ex- 
changes, have  been  exceedingly  various.  Among  the  North 
American  Indians,  and  the  early  settlers  who  came  among 
them,  wampum  and  beaver-skins  were  used  as  money ;  among 
the  natives  of  West  Africa,  money  consists  of  small  shells  call- 
ed "  cowries ;"  in  Abyssinia,  the  common  money  of  to-day  is 
salt ;  in  Chinese  Tartary,  it  is  cubes  of  pressed  tea ;  and  within 
a  comparatively  recent  period  small  cakes  of  soap  have  been 
used  as  money  on  the  west  coast  of  Mexico.  Among  pastoral 
people  of  antiquity,  cattle  and  sheep  were  so  extensively  used 
for  money  that  our  common  English  word  pecuniary  has  its 
derivation  from  the  old  word  joecus,  signifying  a  flock.  And 
while  we  read  in  Homer  that  the  price  of  the  armor  of  Glau- 
cus  was  one  hundred  head  of  cattle,  we  also  know  that  the 
Zulus  of  South  Africa  pay  their  debts  to-day  in  cattle,  and 
reckon  their  wealth  by  the  same  standard. 

Money,  therefore,  existed  before  statutes,  and  exists  and  is 
used  to-day  among  nations  who  have  no  written  or  acknowl- 
edged code  of  laws. 


sow  THEY  INVENTED  MONEY.  23 

It  is  also  of  importance  to  a  clear  understanding  of  this 
subject  to  recognize  at  this  point  another  fundamental  fact, 
namely,  that  there  is  no  evidence  that  any  nation  or  people 
has  ever  adopted,  in  the  first  instance,  any  article  or  commodi- 
ty to  use  as  money  which  did  not  possess,  by  reason  of  some 
inherent  or  intrinsic  desirable  qualities,  a  natural  purchasing 
power  or  value.  And  a  little  reflection  will  make  it  obvious 
that  this  must  have  been  so  from  necessity.  For  in  the  ab- 
sence of  all  law  defining  what  money  should  be,  and  regula- 
ting exchanges,  the  adoption  of  any  article  to  serve  as  money 
which  represented  little  or  no  effort  for  its  production  or  accu- 
mulation would  enable  the  shrewd,  the  idle,  or  unscrupulous, 
easily,  and  without  fear  of  punishment  or  restraint,  to  take 
from  the  rest  of  the  community  products  which  represented 
the  expenditure  of  time  and  labor,  without  giving  in  return 
any  equivalent.  Thus,  for  example,  if  dried  leaves,  or  pieces 
of  paper  with  such  marks  as  any  might  choose  to  stamp  or 
scrawl  upon  them,  had  been  invested  with  a  universal  pur- 
chasing power,  the  primary  practical  result  of  the  use  of  such 
money  would  have  been  to  enable  somebody  to  obtain  some- 
thing for  nothing,  or  to  permit  those  who  would  not  work 
or  save,  to  rob  those  who  did.  The  people  on  the  island,  be- 
ing uneducated,  never  did  any  such  foolish  thing ;  but  when 
they  came  to  study  history,  they  found  out,  to  their  great  sur- 
prise, that  the  people  of  other  countries  had  repeatedly  used 
things  worthless  in  themselves  as  money;  and  many  years 
afterward  a  man  who  aspired  to  be  a  great  teacher  even  came 
to  the  island  from  the  United  States,  and  endeavored  to  con- 
vince the  people  that  it  was  a  great  defect  to  use  any  thing  as 
money  which  had  any  intrinsic  value  as  a  commodity.*     The 

•  "  The  precious  metals  have  many  qualities  which  fit  them  for  use  as 


24  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

children  of  the  first  school  he  attempted  to  talk  to  soon  made 
his  position  embarrassing  by  reading  from  their  histories  that 
the  people  of  every  country,  especially  the  poor  and  ill-in- 
formed, who  had  ever  attempted  to  facilitate  their  exchanges 
by  using  something  as  money  which  had  no  intrinsic  value, 
had  in  every  case  been  so  swindled  and  robbed,  as  a  conse- 
quence, that  sooner  or  later  they  w^ere  always  compelled,  as  a 
measure  of  simple  self-protection,  to  abandon  its  use,  and  in 
its  place  adopt  something  as  money  which  had  a  generally  ac- 
knowledged and  comparatively  permanent  inherent  value  or 
purchasing  power  as  a  commodity. 

The  following  were  some  of  the  narratioris  which  the  chil- 
dren found  and  read  out  of  their  histories : 

"  In  December,  1861,  a  poor  soldier's  widow  put  into  the  savings-bank 
two  hundred  dollars  in  specie,  and  then  removed  with  four  young  children 
to  California.  In  July,  1864,  when  gold  stood  at  two  hundred  and  eighty, 
she  sent  for  her  money.  In  return,  she  received  a  gold  draft  for  eighty- 
three,  accrued  interest  at  six  per  cent,  included." — Henry  Bronson,  Nat- 
ure and  Office  of  Money. 

"  The  morals  of  the  people  were  corrupted  (by  the  Continental  irredeem- 
able money)  beyond  any  thing  that  could  have  been  believed  prior  to  the 
event.  AU  ties  of  honor,  blood,  gratitude,  humanity,  and  justice  were  dis- 
solved. Old  debts  were  paid  when  the  paper  money  was  worth  no  more 
than  seventy  for  one.     Brothers  defrauded  brothers,  children  parents,  and 

coin  money.  Their  defects  are  their  weight,  their  intrinsic  value  as  com- 
modities."— Sodal  Science  and  National  Economy,  by  R.  E.  Thompson,  Phila- 
delphia, 1875. 

"  The  moment  it  is  perceived  that  money  is  nothing  but  a  token,  it  be- 
comes evident  that  any  token  currently  accepted  in  exchange  of  useful 
services  and  products  of  labor  will  perform  the  proper  functions  of  money 
without  regard  to  the  material  of  which  it  is  made ;  and  that  the  less  cost- 
ly the  material  out  of  which  money  is  made,  the  better  for  the  community 
that  uses  it." — Money,  Currency,  and  Banking,  hy  Charles  Moran,  New  York, 
1875,  p.  42. 


HOW  THEY  INVENTED  MONEY.  25 

parents  children.  Widows,  orphans,  and  others  were  paid  for  money  lent 
in  specie  with  depreciated  paper." — Breck,  Sketch  of  Continental  Money, 

"  The  assignats  gradually  dwindled  down  to  nothing,  involving  the  whole 
land  in  ruin — excepting  a  few  lucky  speculators — and  resulted  eventually 
in  national  bankruptcy.  When  thousands  of  wretches,  even  before  the 
final  collapse  of  the  assignats,  were  committing  suicide  to  escape  starvation, 
war  was  a  blessing ;  and  Napoleon  was  the  instrument  by  means  of  which 
all  Europe  was  made  to  feel  the  results  of  worthless  money,  either  directly 
or  by  inoculation,  from  its  maddened  victims." — Notes  on  the  French  As- 
signats, and  their  Influence. 

"  He  had  to  pay  four  hundred  dollars  for  a  hat ;  for  a  pair  of  boots  the 
same.  He  wanted  a  good  horse,  but  was  asked  a  price  equivalent  to  ten 
years'  pay."  "  My  six  months'  earnings  will  scarce  defray  the  most  in- 
dispensable outlay  of  a  single  day.  *  *  *  For  a  bed,  supper,  and  grog  for 
myself,  my  three  companions,  and  their  servants,  I  was  charged,  on  going 
off  without  a  breakfast  next  day,  the  sum  of  eight  hundred  and  fifty  dol- 
lars."— Life  of  General  De  Kalh. 

"In  all,  from  first  to  last  (1835  to  1841),  the  amount  of  notes,  bills, 
drafts,  bonds,  etc.,  issued  by  the  Treasury  of  the  Republic  of  Texas,  and 
serving  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  as  a  'circulating  medium,'  amounted 
to  $13,318,145,  or  at  the  rate  of  more  than  two  hundred  and  sixty  dollars 
per  head  of  the  entire  population.  K  paper  issues  serving  as  money  could 
have  made  a  people  rich,  the  Texans  ought  to  have  been  the  richest  people 
in  the  universe.  In  January,  1839,  Texas  treasury-notes  were  worth  no 
more  th&xi  forty  cents  on  the  dollar;  in  the  spring  of  1839,  they  were  worth 
thirty-seven  and  a  half  cents  ;  in  1841,  from  twelve  to  fifteen  cents  ;  and 
in  1842  it  required,  in  the  characteristic  language  of  the  times,  'fifteen 
dollars  in  treasury-notes  to  buy  three  glasses  of  brandy-and-water  with- 
out sugar.'  '  By  this  time  there  was  little  circulating  medium  of  any  kind 
in  Texas  ;  but  this  was  no  great  calamity,  as  the  people  had  but  little  left 
to  circulate.'  The  evils  the  system  did  were  immense,  and  such  as  for 
which,  even  were  it  so  disposed,  the  Government  could  afford  no  compen- 
sation to  the  sufferers." — Gouge's  Fiscal  History  of  Texas. 

Again,  one  of  the  principal  objects  for  which  money  was 
devised  and  brought  into  use  was  to  serve  as  a  measure,  or 
standard,  for  estimating  the  comparative  vahie  of  other  things. 


26  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONET. 

But  it  seems  hardly  possible  to  conceive  of  a  person  desir- 
ous of  using  money  for  such  purpose,  selecting  an  article  to 
measure  values  which  in  itself  possesses  no  value,  or  costs  no 
labor  to  produce,  any  more  than  he  would  select  as  a  stand- 
ard for  measuring  length  something  which  had  no  length,  or 
as  a  standard  for  measuring  weight  something  which  had  no 
weight.  The  people  of  the  island  must  have  been  unusually 
stupid  if  they  did  not  from  the  outset,  therefore,  clearly  see 
that  nothing  can  Ije  reliable  and  good  money  under  all  cir- 
cumstances which  does  not  of  itself  possess  the  full  amount  of 
the  value  which  it  professes  on  its  face  to  possess. 


CHAPTER  V. 

HOW  THE  PEOPLE  ON  THE  ISLAND  AND  ELSEWHERE 
LEARNED  WISDOM. 

BcpT  while  any  commodity  possessed  of  acknowledged  pur- 
chasing power  or  value  may  be  used  as  money,  the  experi- 
ence of  the  islanders  and  every  other  people  must  have  soon 
taught  them  that  some  commodities  are  much  better  adapted 
to  this  purpose  than  others ;  or,  rather,  that  the  use  of  certain 
commodities  as  money,  while  they  may  answer  the  purpose, 
nevertheless  entail  very  serious  disadvantages.  And  the  de- 
tails of  the  manner  in  which  this  information  has  been  ac- 
quired by  experience  constitute  one  of  the  most  interesting 
chapters  in  the  world's  history.  The  experience  of  the  island- 
ers was  somewhat  as  follows : 

At  the  outset  they  agreed  to  use  cowries — a  pretty  shell 
picked  up  on  the  beach,  and  which  the  women  all  desired  to 
have  and  use  as  an  ornament.     These  shells  were  not,  howev- 


THE  ISLANDERS  AND   OTHERS  LEARN  WISDOM.         27 

er,  plentiful ;  and,  in  fact,  it  was  found  that  it  required  about 
as  much  time  and  labor  for  a  man  to  collect  a  hundred  of 
them  as  it  did  to  grow  a  bushel  of  wheat.  Consequently, 
wheat  regularly  exchanged  for  cowries  (as  money)  at  the  rate 
of  one  hundred  cowries  for  one  bushel,  while  the  farmer  with 
two  thousand  cowries  could,  readily  buy  a  plow,  which  was 
considered  equivalent  in  value  to  twenty  bushels.  By-and-by, 
some  idle  fellows  that  were  in  the  habit  of  sailing  made  a 
long  excursion,  and,  for  the  first  time,  visited  a  little  island  on 
the  remote  horizon.  When  they  landed,  they  found,  to  their 
surprise,  that  instead  of  cowries  being  very  scarce  on  the 
beach,  they  were  very  abundant.  They  winked  at  one  anoth- 
er, and  said  little ;  but  each  man  proceeded  to  gather  all  the 
cowries  he  could,  and,  returning  to  the  main  island,  kept  their 
discovery  a  profound  secret. 

The  first  thing  of  note  that  next  happened  among  the  Rob- 
inson Crusoe  people  was  a  great  and  unexpected  revival  in 
business.  Money  began  to  grow  abundant.  Societary  circu- 
lation was  never  so  active.  Every  thing  that  was  offered  for 
sale  speedily  found  a  purchaser,  and,  demand  increasing,  prices 
rapidly  increased  also.  It  was  also  noticed  that  a  few  per- 
sons who  never  did  any  regular  work,  but  speculated  and 
gambled  all  the  morning,  and  took  pleasant  sailing  excursions 
every  afternoon,  had,  especially,  plenty  of  money,  which,  as 
patriotic  citizens,  desirous  of  making  trade  lively,  they  were 
always  most  ready  to  part  with  for  other  commodities.  The 
shop-keepers,  the  farmers,  and  the  mechanics,  all  also  finding 
that  they  had  more  money  than  usual,  all  also  felt  impelled  to 
buy  something,  and  prices  took  a  fresh  start  upward,  so  that  a 
bushel  of  wheat  that  could  previously  have  been  sold  for  one 
hundred  cowries  easily  brought  one  hundred  and  fifty,  and 
even  two  hundred.     But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  farmer,  in- 


28  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

stead  of  being  able  to  buy,  as  before,  a  plow  for  two  thou- 
sand cowries,  now  found  that  he  had  to  pay  double,  or  four 
thousand ;  or,  in  other  words,  the  cowries  had  only  about  one- 
half  the  purchasing  power  they  possessed  before. 

But  for  a  time  every  body  was  jubilant.  Was  it  not  evi- 
dent that  the  value  of  every  man's  possessions,  measured  in 
cowry  money,  had  greatly  increased — and  what  could  be  more 
natural  than  that  the  shrewd  adventurers  who  had  been  the 
authors  of  these  golden  days  should  be  highly  honored,  invited 
to  speak  before  cowry  clubs  in  all  parts  of  the  island,  and  be 
even  talked  of  for  the  chief  offices,  which  still  continued  to  be 
filled  by  Robinson  Crusoe  and  his  man  Friday  ?  The  contin- 
ually augmenting  prices — measured  in  cowry  money — of  all 
commodities,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  continually  di- 
minishing purchasing  power  of  the  cowries,  at  last  began  to 
attract  attention,  and  this  in  turn  induced  distrust ;  so  that  the 
price  of  a  bushel  of  wheat,  which  had  been  at  first  one  hun- 
dred cowries,  and  then  two  hundred,  rose  to  three,  four,  and 
even  five  hundred  cowries.  Another  remarkable  circumstance 
noticed  was,  that,  as  prices  increased,  the  wants  bf  trade  for 
cowry  money  also  increased  proportionably,  which  want  the 
adventurers  who  had  been  the  means  of  giving  the  island  its 
increased  volume  of  money  took  care  to  supply  by  bringing 
additional  quantities  of  cowries  as  they  were  needed.  It  was 
also  observed  that,  as  distrust  increased,  there  was  also  a  re- 
markable increase  in  societary  activity ;  for  every  body  desired 
to  change  off  his  cowry  money  for  something  else.*     Per- 

*  "To  my  mind,  the  great  and  immediate  need  of  the  day  is  the  issu- 
ance of  more  legal -tender  notes,  in  order  to  impair  the  confidence  in 
them  to  an  extent  as  to  cause  the  owners  of  them  to  desire  to  exchange 
them  for  other  kinds  of  property,  or  man's  wants  —  not  simply  to  loan 
out  on  short  or  long  date  paper,  with  fire-proof  security,  at  low  or  high 


THE  ISLANDERS  AND   OTHERS  LEARN  WISDOM.         29 


7n\     A^ 


THEN  THE   BUBBLE   BURST  ;     STOCK  COMPANIES    ALL   FAILED. 

sons  who  were  in  debt  made  haste  to  pay  their  debts,  and  ev- 
ery body  was  ready  to  lend  cowry  money  to  start  all  sorts  of 
new  enterprises.     A  company  was   organized,  for  example, 

rates  of  interest,  which  can  now  be  done  to  any  extent  required  —  but 
absolutely  part  with  them  for  other  kinds  of  property." — Views  of  Enoch 
Ensley,  of  Memphis,  Tennessee,  on  the  National  Finances,  Memphis,  September, 
1875. 


30  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

with  a  capital  of  ten  million  cowries,  to  explore  the  wreck  of 
the  original  ship  which  brought  Robinson  Crusoe  to  the  isl- 
and; and  although  nobody  knew  exactly  where  the  wreck 
was,  or  what  was  supposed  to  remain  in  it,  it  was  advocated 
as  affording  great  opportunity  for  labor.  Another  project,  for 
which  a  company  with  fifty  milHon  cowi'ies  capital  was  start- 
ed, was  to  build  a  system  of  canals  across  the  island,  although 
the  island  had  a  width  of  only  about  ten  miles,  with  a  remark- 
ably safe  ocean  navigation  all  around  it. 

Finally,  the  secret  of  the  whole  matter  gradually  leaked  out. 
Other  people  besides  the  original  three  shrewd  fellows  found 
out  where  the  supply  of  cowries  came  from,  and  made  haste 
to  visit  the  remote  island,  provide  themselves  with  money,  and 
put  it  in  circulation.  But  the  more  money  that  was  issued, 
the  more  was  needed  to  supply  the  wants  of  trade,  until  at 
last  it  took  a  four -horse  wagon -load  of  cowries  to  buy  a 
bushel  of  wheat.  •  Then  the  bubble  burst.  Stock -companies 
all  failed.  Trade  became  utterly  stagnant.  The  man  whom 
Eobinson  Crusoe  had  made  secretary  of  the  island  treasury 
thought  he  could  help  matters  by  issuing  a  few  more  cowries, 
but  it  was  no  use.  Some  very  wise  persons  were  certain  that 
every  thing  would  be  all  right  again  if  people  would  only  have 
confidence;  but  as  long  as  the  people  who  worked  and  saved 
were  uncertain  what  they  were  to  receive  for  the  products  of 
their  labor — something  or  nothing — confidence  didn't  retm*n. 
Every  body  felt  poor  and  swindled.  Every  body  who  thought 
he  had  money  in  savings-banks  woke  up  all  at  once  to  the 
realization  that  his  money  was  nothing  but  a  lot  of  old  shells. 
Every  body  had  his  bags,  his  tills,  and  his  money-boxes  filled 
with  shells,  which  he  had  taken  in  exchange  for  commodi- 
ties which  had  cost  him  valuable  time  and  labor.  Strictly 
speaking,  however,  calamity   did   not    overtake  every  body. 


THE  ISLANDERS  AND   OTHERS  LEARN  WISDOM.         31 

There  were  some  exceptions,  namely  the  shrewd  and  idle  fel- 
lows who  had  first  found  the  cheap  supply  of  cowries,  and, 
taking  advantage  of  the  ignorance  of  the  community,  had  add- 
ed them  to  the  before-existing  circulation  to  serve  as  money. 
All  these  had  taken  very  good  care  to  keep  the  substantial 
valuable  things — houses,  lots,  plows,  grain,  etc. — which  they 
had  received  in  exchange.  They  had,  in  fact,  grown  rich  by 
robbing  the  rest  of  the  community.*  The  community,  how- 
ever, were  too  courteous  to  call  them  thieves,  and  in  conversa- 
tion they  were  usually  referred  to  as  shrewd  financiers,  and  as 
men  ahead  of  their  time.  The  concluding  act  of  this  curious 
island  experience  was,  that  the  formerly  so  highly  prized 
money  became  depreciated  to  such  an  extent  as  to  possess 
value  only  as  a  material  for  making  lime.  The  people  ac- 
cordingly, by  burning,  made  lime  out  of  it,  and  then,  in  order 
to  make  things  outwardly  cheerful,  used  the  lime  as  white- 
wash. But  upon  one  point  they  were  all  unanimous,  and  that 
was,  that  the  next  commodity  they  might  select  to  use  as 
money  should  be  something  whose  permanency  of  value  did 
not  depend  on  elements  capable  of  being  suddenly  affected  by 
accidental  circumstances,  or  arbitrarily  and  easily  changed  by 


*  "  In  tlie  midst  of  the  public  distress,  one  class  prospered  greatly— the 
bankers ;  and,  among  the  bankers,  none  could,  in  skill  or  in  luck,  bear  a 
comparison  with  Charles  Buncombe.  He  had  been,  not  many  years  be- 
fore, a  goldsmith  of  very  moderate  wealth.  He  had  probably,  after  the 
fashion  of  his  craft,  plied  for  customers  under  the  arcades  of  the  Royal  Ex- 
change, had  saluted  merchants  with  profound  bows,  and  had  begged  to  be 
allowed  the  honor  of  keeping  their  cash.  But  so  dexterously  did  he  now 
avail  himself  of  the  opportunities  of  profit  which  the  general  confusion  of 
prices  gave  to  a  money-changer,  that,  at  the  moment  when  the  trade  of  the 
kingdom  was  depressed  to  the  lowest  point,  he  laid  down  near  ninety 
thousand  pounds  for  the  estate  of  Helmsley,  in  the  North  Riding  of  York- 
shire."—Macaulay's  History  of  England,  State  of  the  Currency  in  1694-'95. 


32  EOBINSON  CEUSOE'S  MONEY. 

the  devices  of  those  who  desired  to  get  their  living  without 
working  for  it. 

But  this  experience  of  the  islanders  in  reference  to  the 
originating  and  using  of  money,  although  curious,  has  not 
been  exceptional ;  for  the  records  of  history  show  that  men 
almost  everywhere,  in  going  through  the  process  of  civiliza- 
tion, have  had  a  greater  or  less  measure  of  the  same  experi- 
ence. One  particularly  noteworthy  illustration  of  this  is  re- 
corded in  the  "  History  of  New  York,"  by  Diedrich  Knicker- 
bocker, and  in  the  manuscript  records  of  the  New  Tork  His- 
torical Society.  It  was  in  the  days  of  Dutch  rule — 1659 — in 
New  Amsterdam  (afterward  New  York),  when  the  common 
money  in  use  was  the  so-called  Indian  money,  or  "  wampum ;" 
which  consisted  "  of  strings  of  beads  wrought  of  clams,  peri- 
winkles, and  other  shell-fish.  These  had  formed  a  simple  cur- 
rency among  the  savages,  who  were  content  to  take  them  of 
the  Dutch  in  exchange  for  peltries." 

William  ffieft  was  at  that  time  governor,  and  being  desirous 
of  increasing  the  wealth  of  New  Amsterdam,  and  withal,  as 
the  histoj'ian  relates,  somewhat  emulous  of  Solomon  (who  made 
gold  and  silver  as  plenty  as  stones  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem), 
he  (the  governor)  determined  to  accomplish  liis  desire,  and  at 
the  same  time  rival  Solomon  by  making  this  money  of  easy 
production  the  current  coin  of  the  pro^dnce.  "  It  is  true,  it 
had  an  intrinsic  value  among  the  Indians,  who  used  it  to  orna- 
ment their  robes  and  moccasins ;  but  among  the  honest  burgh- 
ers it  had  no  more  intrinsic  value "  than  bits  of  bone,  rag, 
paper,  or  any  other  worthless  material.  "  This  consideration, 
however,  had  no  weight  with  Governor  Kieft.  He  began  by 
paying  all  the  servants  of  the  company,  and  all  the  debts  of 
the  Government,  in  strings  of  wampum.  He  sent  emissaries 
to  sweep  the  shores  of  Long  Island,  which  was  the  Ophir  of 


THE  ISLANDERS  AND   OTHERS  LEABN  WISDOM.         33 

this  modern  Solomon,  and  abounded  in  shell-fish.  These  were 
transported  in  loads  to  New  Amsterdam,  coined  into  Indian 
money,  and  launched  into  circulation." 

"And  now  for  a  time  affairs  went  on  swimmingly.  Money 
became  as  plentiful  as  in  the  modern  days  of  paper  currency, 
and,  to  use  a  popular  phrase, '  a  wonderful  impulse  was  given 
to  public  prosperity.' " 

Unfortunately  for  the  success  of  Governor  Kieft's  scheme, 
the  Yankees  on  Connecticut  River  soon  found  that  they  could 
make  wampum  in  any  quantity,  with  little  labor  and  cost,  out 
of  oyster-shells,  and  accordingly  made  haste  to  supply  all  the 
wampum  that  the  wants  of  trade  in  New  Amsterdam  re- 
quired ;  buying  with  it  every  thing  that  was  offered,  and  pay- 
ing the  worthy  Dutchmen  their  own  price.  Governor  Kief  t's 
money,  it  is  to  be  further  noticed,  had  also  in  perfection  that 
most  essential  attribute  of  all  good  money, "  non-exportabili- 
tyP  Accordingly,  when  the  Dutchmen  wanted  any  tin  pans 
or  wooden  bowls  of  Yankee  manufacture,  they  had  to  pay  for 
them  in  substantial  guilders,  or  other  sound  metallic  currency ; 
wampum  being  no  more  acceptable  to  the  Yankees  in  ex- 
change than  addled  eggs,  rancid  butter,  rusty  pork,  rotten  po- 
tatoes, or  any  other  non-exportable  Dutch  commodity.* 

The  result  of  all  this  was,  that  in  a  little  time  the  Dutch- 

*  "  Beyond  the  sea,  in  foreign  lands,  it  (the  greenback)  fortunately  is 
not  money;  but,  sir,  when  have  we  had  such  a  long  and  unbroken  career 
of  prosperity  in  business  as  since  we  adopted  this  non-exportable  curren- 
cy ?" — Speech  of  Hon.  William  D.  Kellcy,  House  of  Representatives,  1870. 

"  I  desire  the  dollar  to  be  made  of  such  material,  for  the  purpose,  that  it 
shall  never  be  exported  or  desirable  to  carry  out  of  the  country.  Framing 
an  American  system  of  finance,  I  do  not  propose  to  adapt  it  to  the  wants 
of  any  other  nation." — Speech  of  General  B.  F.  Butler  lefore  the  New  York 
Board  of  Trade,  October  14th,  1875. 

3 


^ 


34  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

men  and  the  Indians  got  all  the  wampum,  and  the  Yankees 
all  the  beaver-skins,  Dutch  herrings,  Dutch  cheeses,  and  all 
the  silver  and  gold  of  the  province.  Then,  as  might  naturally 
have  been  expected,  confidence  became  impaired.  Trade  also 
came  to  a  stand-still,  and,  to  quote  from  the  old  manuscript 
records, "  the  company  is  defrauded  of  her  revenues,  and  the 
merchants  disappointed  in  making  returns  with  which  they 
might  wish  to  meet  their  engagements."  It  is  safe  to  conclude 
that,  after  this,  the  commodity  made  use  of  by  the  Dutchmen 
as  money  was  something  less  liable  to  have  its  value  impaired 
than  wampum. 

The  early  settlers  in  East  Tennessee  also  came  to  a  similar 
conclusion,  after  a  somewhat  similar  experience.  Eaccoon- 
skins  were  in  demand  for  various  purposes,  and  consequently 
were  valuable.  They  accordingly  selected  them  for  use  as 
money.  Opossum -skins,  on  the  other  hand,  were  not  in  de- 
mand, and  therefore  had  little  value.  Those  of  the  settlers 
who  desired  to  discharge  their  obligations  without  giving  a 
full  equivalent  paid  their  taxes  in  opossum -skins  to  which 
coons'  tails  were  attached.  The  counterfeits  having  once  got 
into  the  treasury,  could  not  be  exported  out  of  the  treasury 
to  meet  the  payments  of  the  State,  and  the  use  of  coon-skins 
as  currency  came  to  an  end. 

But  to  return  to  the  island.  Although  the  first  experience 
of  the  islanders  in  selecting  a  commodity  to  be  used  as  mon- 
ey had  been  particularly  unfortunate,  the  necessity  of  having 
some  agency  to  serve  the  purpose  of  money  remained  as  great 
as  before,  and  consequently  a. new  commodity  had  to  be  se- 
lected. Various  people  proposed  various  things.  Some  pro- 
posed to  use  bananas,  which  were  always  desirable,  and,  when 
good  and  ripe,  were  always  exchangeable  at  a  very  constant 
value ;  but  their  unfitness  to  be  used  as  money  was  acknowl- 


THE  ISLANDERS  AND   OTHERS  LEARN  WISDOM.         35 

edged  as  soon  as  it  was  pointed  out  that  bananas  decayed  very 
quickly  after  they  became  most  useful,  and  that  therefore  a 
man  who  had  plenty  of  money  to-day  might  have  none  to- 
morrow, and  that  through  no  fault  of  his  own.*  Wheat,  cat- 
tle, and  pieces  of  stamped  iron  were  also  proposed,  but  all  of 
these  were  found  to  be  unsuitable  in  some  essential  particu- 
lar. Thus,  for  example,  it  was  objected  to  wheat,  that,  though 
it  was  almost  always  in  demand,  and  represented  a  very  con- 
stant amount  of  labor  for  its  production,  it  was  too  bulky  to 
carry  about,  and  rarely  had  the  same  exact  value  one  year 
as  another ;  to  cattle,  that  it  was  impossible  to  divide  up  an 
ox,  cutting  off  the  tail  at  one  time  and  the  ears  at  another,  for 
the  purpose  of  making  change,  without  destroying  the  value 
of  the  animal  as  a  whole ;  and  that  if  cows  in  general  were 
to  be  used  as  legal  tender  to  pay  debts,  the  very  poorest  cow 
would  very  probably  be  selected  from  the  money-pen  for  such 
a  purpose  ;t  while,  if  iron  were  adopted  as  money,  and  circu- 

*  "Some  years  since,  Mademoiselle  Z^lie,  a  singer  of  the  Theatre  Ly- 
rique  at  Paris,  made  a  professional  tour  round  the  world,  and  gave  a  con- 
cert in  the  Society  Islands.  In  exchange  for  an  air  from  '  Norma/  and  a 
few  other  songs,  she  was  to  receive  a  third  part  of  the  receipts.  When 
counted,  her  share  was  found  to  consist  of  three  pigs,  twenty-three  tur- 
keys, forty-four  chickens,  five  thousand  cocoa-nuts,  besides  considerahle 
quantities  of  bananas,  lemons,  and  oranges.  At  the  Halle  (market)  in 
Paris,  the  prima  donna  remarks,  in  her  lively  letter  printed  by  M.  Walow- 
ski,  this  amount  of  live  stock  and  vegetables  might  have  brought  four 
thousand  francs,  which  would  have  been  good  remuneration  for  five  songs. 
In  the  Society  Islands,  however,  pieces  of  money  were  very  scarce ;  and  as 
mademoiselle  could  not  consume  any  considerable  portion  of  the  receipts 
herself,  it  became  necessary  in  the  mean  time  to  feed  the  pigs  and  i>oultry 
with  the  fruit." — Jevons's  Money  and  Mechanism  of  Exchange, 

t  In  1658,  it  was  ordered  by  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  that  no 
man  should  pay  taxes  "  in  lank  cattle." — Felt's  Massachusetts  Currency. 


36  BOBIKSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

lated  at  its  current  value,  it  might  be  necessary  to  move  about 
a  ton  to  pay  a  debt  of  twenty  or  thirty  dollars. 

A  peculiar  kind  of  beads,  made  of  blue  glass,  had  come  into 
use  with  the  women  on  the  island  as  ornaments,  and  being 
greatly  in  demand,  small  in  bulk,  and  of  most  durable  mate- 
rial, they  were  thought  to  be  peculiarly  well  fitted  to  serve  the 
purpose  of  money.  They  were  accordingly  adopted,  and  for 
a  time  fairly  answered  the  purpose.  But  all  at  once  the  wom- 
en declared  their  continued  use  to  be  unfashionable ;  and  all 
use  and  demand  for  the  beads  at  once  ceasing,  the  merchants 
and  others  who  had  accumulated  a  large  stock  of  them,  in  ex- 
change for  other  commodities,  at  the  same  moment  found  that 
what  they  had  regarded  as  money  had  no  longer  any  pur- 
chasing power  or  value,  and  in  consequence  experienced  great 
losses.  Thereupon  the  community  concluded  not  to  use  blue 
glass  beads  any  longer  as  money.* 

How  fast  the  people  on  the  island,  by  reason  of  their  va- 
ried experience,  educated  themselves  up  to  a  knowledge  of 
what  constitutes  good  money  may  be  inferred  from  the  fol- 
lowing incident: 

A  portion  of  the  inhabitants  on  the  island  were  heathen, 
and,  to  defray  the  expense  of  efforts  to  civilize  and  Christian- 
ize them,  it  was  the  habit  of  certain  good  men  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  assembling  of  the  people  from  time  to  time 
to  solicit  and  receive  contributions  for  such  objects.  It  was 
observed,  however,  on  such  occasions  that  some  persons,  ei- 
ther through  ignorance  of  what  constitutes  money,  or  by  reason 
of  great  poverty,  were  in  the  habit  of  depositing  commodities 
in  the  hat  which  were  not  money ;  and  the  practice  having 

*  This  incident  is  related  by  Burton, in  his  "Explorations  of  the  Lake 
Regions  of  Central  Africa"  (1858-'59),  as  one  within  his  knowledge  of  act- 
ual occurrence. 


THE  ISLANDERS  AND   OTHERS  LEARN  WISDOM.         37 

been  brought  to  the  attention  of  Kobinson  Crusoe  (who  gen- 
erally presided  at  such  meetings),  he  is  reported  to  have  ad- 
ministered rebuke  and  instruction  in  the  following  impressive 
manner : 

"  Before  proceeding  to  take  up  our  regular  contribution  for 
the  heathen,"  he  said,  "  I  would  suggest  to  the  congregation — 
and  more  especially  to  those  who  sit  in  the  gallery — that  the 
practice  of  putting  into  the  hat  commodities  which  are  not 
money,  more  especially  buttons,  shows  a  degree  of  ignorance 
respecting  the  uses  of  money  on  the  part  of  some  in  this  com- 
munity which  I  had  not  supposed  possible,  after  all  our  recent 
and  varied  experience  on  this  subject.  But  if,  through  igno- 
rance or  impecuniosity,  any  should  feel  obliged  to  continue 
to  contribute  buttons  in  the  place  of  money,  I  would  request 
that  they  do  not  stamp  down  or  break  off  the  eyes ;  inasmuch, 
as  while  by  so  doing  they  utterly  destroy  the  utility  of  these 
commodities  as  buttons,  and  do  not  increase  their  desirabilitv 
as  money,  they  also  utterly  fail  to  deceive  the  heathen ;  who, 
although  ignorant  of  the  Gospel,  and  not  using  buttons  for 
any  purpose,  are  nevertheless,  as  a  general  thing,  good  judges 
of  currency." 


38  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

GOLD,  AND  HOW  THEY  CAME  TO  USE  IT. 

Finally,  time  and  circumstances  helped  the  islanders  to  a 
solution  of  their  difficulties.  A  man,  walking  in  a  ravine  one 
day,  picked  up  a  small  bright  mass  of  shining  metal.  Al- 
though it  had  evidently  lain  in  the  sand,  been  washed  by 
the  water,  exposed  to  the  atmosphere,  and  rubbed  against  the 
rocks,  nobody  knows  how  long,  it  had  a  remarkable  brightness 
and  color ;  and  the  more  it  was  rubbed,  the  brighter  and  more 
attractive  it  became.  This  little  mass  of  metal,  which  after- 
ward came  to  be  designated  as  gold,  the  man  carried  home  to 
his  wife,  who  in  turn  was  so  much  pleased  with  it  that  she 
hung  it  by  a  string  about  her  neck  as  an  ornament.  Its  at- 
tractiveness of  course  excited  the  desire  of  every  other  woman 
to  have  the  same,  and  a  further  search  in  the  ravine  resulted 
in  the  discovery  of  other  nuggets.  Closer  examination  of  the 
new  metal  also  showed  that  it  possessed  many  other  remarka- 
ble qualities  besides  brightness.  It  was  found  it  could  easily 
be  melted  and  cast,  and  also  be  readily  molded  without  heat 
by  hammering  and  pressing ;  and  that  when  so  cast,  molded, 
and  pressed,  it  persistently  retained  the  shape  and  impression 
that  were  given  it.  Further,  that  it  could  be  drawn  into  the 
finest  of  wire,  hammered  into  the  thinnest  of  plates  and  leaves, 
and  be  bent  and  twisted  to  almost  any  extent  without  break- 
ing; that  an  admixture  with  it  of  the  slightest  impurity 
or  alloy  so  immediately  changed  its  color,  that  color  became 


GOLD,  AND  HOW  THEY  CAME  TO    USE  IT.  39 

to  a  very  high  degree  a  test  of  its  purity  ;*  that  fire,  water,  air, 
and  ahiiost  all  the  agencies  destructive  to  other  things,  had 
comparatively  little  or  no  effect  upon  it ;  that  with  the  excep- 
tion of  size  and  weight,  every  piece,  no  matter  how  small,  pos- 
sessed all  the  attributes  of  every  other  larger  piece ;  and  that 
when  any  large  piece  was  di\dded  into  a  great  number  of 
smaller  pieces,  these  last,  in  turn,  could  be  reunited  without 
loss  or  difficulty  again  into  one  whole.  Of  course,  the  discov- 
ery of  all  these  remarkable  qualities  united  in  one  substance 
not  only  greatly  increased  its  utility,  but  at  the  same  time 
greatly  increased  the  desire  of  every  body  to  have  it.  In 
place  of  being  worn  in  a  rough  state  as  an  ornament,  it 
was  converted  into  rings,  bracelets,  chains,  pins,  etc.  It  was 
found  to  be  almost  indispensable  for  a  great  number  of  me- 
chanical and  chemical  purposes ;  and,  finally,  the  charm  for 
its  possession    and  desire  for  its  use  proved   so  overpower- 

*  In  one  of  the  mints  there  is  exhibited  as  a  curiosity  a  case  in  which 
this  fact  is  demonstrated  in  the  most  striking  manner.  It  contains  some 
fifty  or  more  very  thin  ribbons,  or  strips,  of  gold,  half  an  inch  wide  by  three 
inches  in  length,  placed  in  a  row,  parallel  to,  but  separated  from  each  oth- 
er by  a  slight  interval.  The  first  ribbon  is  composed  of  gold  of  the  high- 
'  est  standard  of  purity ;  the  second  differs  from  the  fiirst  to  the  extent  of 
one  per  cent,  of  admixture  with  a  baser  metal ;  while  the  third  contains 
two  per  cent.,  the  fourth  three  per  cent.,  and  so  on,  until  in  the  last  ribbon, 
or  strip,  the  amount  of  gold  and  alloy  is  equal.  The  color  of  the  first  rib- 
bon is,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  term,  golden  or  typical.  The  color  of 
the  second  differs  from  the  first  by  a  shade,  which  shade  in  every  success- 
ive ribbon  changes  and  becomes  more  and  more  marked  as  the  proportion 
of  alloy  entering  into  its  composition  increases :  and  so  peculiar  are  these 
differences  of  color  that  it  is  possible  for  an  individual  unskilled  in  metal- 
lurgy, but  having  access  to  the  standard,  to  make  a  comparatively  accu- 
rate test  of  the  purity  of  any  article  of  gold  in  his  possession  by  a  simple 
comparison  of  color. 


4:0  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

ing  that  to  many  it  actually  became  almost  an  object  of  wor- 
ship. 

If  a  man  was  a  Pagan,  he  felt  that  in  no  way  could  he  so 
honor  and  symboHze  the  god  he  worshiped  as  to  fashion  in 
gold  the  image  of  that  which  he  imagined ;  if  he  was  a  Chris- 
tian, he  chose  gold  for  the  fabrication  of  his  symbolic  vessels 
and  ornaments,  as,  of  all  material  things,  the  one  which  was 
most  typical  of  purity,  beauty,  durability,  and  worth.  If  a 
great  government  or  a  people  desired  to  commemorate  the 
deeds  of  a  hero  or  statesman,  it  impressed  their  effigies  in  med- 
als of  gold ;  if  a  maxim  was  enunciated  which  by  general  con- 
sent embodied  the  best  rules  of  life,  it  was  called  golden ;  if  a 
law  or  precept  was  thought  worthy  of  being  kept  in  ever-pres- 
ent remembrance  before  the  people,  it  was  emblazoned  in  let- 
ters of  gold ;  while  for  speech,  prophecy,  or  poetry,  this  same 
metal  has  ever  been  a  never-failing  source  for  the  finest  of 
comparisons  and  the  most  attractive  of  figurative  illustra- 
tions. In  short,  from  the  time  of  its  first  discovery,  among  all 
nations,  in  all  countries,  with  the  ignorant  and  the  learned,  the 
savage  and  the  civilized,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  humble  and 
the  powerful,  gold  has  always  been,  of  all  material  things,  the 
one  which  most  men  have  desired  most;  the  one  for  which, 
under  most  circumstances,  they  have  been  willing  to  exchange 
all  other  material  possessions,  and  for  the  sake  of  acquiring 
which,  even  part  with  immaterial  things  of  greater  value — 
honor,  creed,  morality,  health,  and  even  life  itself. 

Gold  so  becoming  an  object  of  universal  desire  to  the  peo- 
ple on  the  island,  and  made  exchangeable  for  all  other  things, 
it  soon  acquired  spontaneously  a  universal  purchasing  power, 
and  from  that  moment  became  Money. 

This  purchasing  power  was  at  first  by  no  means  fixed  or 
constant.     So  long  as  there  was  but  a  small  quantity  of  gold, 


GOLD,  AND  MOW  TREY  CAME  TO   USE  IT.  41 

its  purchasing  power  was  large.  As  the  quantity  extracted 
from  the  rocks  or  washed  from  the  sands  became  greater, 
and  the  wants  of  the  people  became  more  and  more  satis- 
fied, its  purchasing  power  or  value  decreased ;  and  if  the 
supply  had  continued,  and  the  demand  had  been  limited  to 
the  wants  of  the  island  exclusively,  its  value  in  time  would 
have  undoubtedly  been  no  greater  than  copper  or  iron,  and 
possibly  not  so  great.  But,  very  curiously,  an  abundant  sup- 
ply did  not  continue.  That  which  was  obtained  first  and 
with  little  labor  proved  to  be  the  result  of  the  decay  and 
washing  of  the  rocks  through  long  ages ;  and  when  the  readily 
accessible  or  surface  deposits  became  exhausted,  as  was  soon 
the  case,  the  conditions  determining  the  supply  of  gold  became 
altogether  different.  On  the  one  hand,  there  was  no  lack  of 
gold.  Instead  of  being  a  very  scarce  metal,  as  was  for  a  time 
supposed,  it  was  found  to  be  so  widely  disseminated  that  the 
chemists  and  metallurgists  readily  detected  traces  of  gold  in 
almost  every  extensive  bed  of  clay  and  sand  they  examined.* 

*  In  1862  Mr.  Eckfelt,  then  principal  assayer  at  the  mint  in  Philadelphia, 
communicated  to  the  American  Philosophical  Society  the  result  of  some 
exceedingly  curious  examinations  demonstrating  the  very  wide  distribu- 
tion of  gold.  The  city  of  Philadelphia,  he  stated,  was  underlaid  by  a  bed 
of  clay  having  an  area  of  about  ten  square  miles,  with  an  average  depth 
of  about  fifteen  feet.  Specimens  of  this  clay — all  natural  deposits — taken 
from  such  localities  as  might  furnish  a  fair  assay  of  the  whole — the  cellar 
of  the  market  on  Market  Street,  near  Eleventh,  and  from  a  brick-yard  in 
the  suburbs  of  the  city — all  yielded,  on  careful  analysis,  small  amounts  of 
gold ;  the  average  amount  indicated  being  seven-tenths  of  a  grain — or 
about  three  cents'  worth — of  gold  for  every  cubit  foot  of  clay.  Assuming 
these  data  to  be  correct,  the  value  of  the  gold,  according  to  Mr.  Eckfelt, 
which  lies  securely  buried  underneath  the  streets  and  houses  of  Philadel- 
phia must  therefore  be  equivalent  to  $128,000,000 ;  or  if  we  include  aU 
the  clay  contained  in  the  corporate  limits,  the  amount  of  gold  contained 


42  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  experience  also  proved  that  to  col- 
lect any  very  considerable  quantity  of  the  metal  required  the 
expenditure  not  only  of  a  vast  amount  of  most  disagreeable 
and  exhausting  labor,  but  also  of  a  great  quantity  of  other 
commodities.  So  that  the  people  who,  at  the  outset,  abandon- 
ed their  various  occupations  of  raising  wheat,  making  coats, 
building  boats,  baking  bread,  and  constructing  stone  walls  and 
chimneys,  and  betook  themselves  to  digging  gold,  soon  learn- 
ed that,  as  a  general  rule,  the  results  of  a  day's  labor  thus  em- 
ployed purchased  no  more  of  useful  or  desirable  commodities — 
meat,  drink,  clothes,  etc. — than  the  results  of  a  similar  amount 
of  labor  exerted  in  the  most  ordinary  occupations ;  and  not  a 
few  even  were  ready  to  assert,  as  the  result  of  their  individual 
experience,  that  a  man  could  do  better  for  himself  in  the  way 
of  earning  a  li\'ing  by  following  any  and  every  other  occupa- 
tion rather  than  that  of  seeking  for  gold.*  Accordingly,  after 
trying  it  for  a  little  while,  the  most  skilled  laborers  left  the 
gold  regions  and  went  back  to  their  old  occupations;  and 
these,  in  turn,  were  followed  by  the  unskilled  laborers  in  such 

in  it  must  be  equal  to  all  that  has  yet  been  obtained  from  California  and 
Australia. 

"It  is  also  apparent," says  Mr.  Eckfelt,  "that  every  time  a  cart-load  of 
clay  is  hauled  out  of  a  cellar  in  Philadelphia,  enough  gold  goes  with  it  to 
pay  for  the  carting ;  and  if  the  bricks  which  front  our  houses  could  have 
brought  to  their  surface,  in  the  form  of  gold-leaf,  the  amount  of  gold  which 
they  contain,  we  should  have  the  glittering  show  of  two  square  inches  on 
every  brick." 

*  On  the  Rhine,  near  Strasburg,  a  good  able-bodied  laborer  can  earn  on 
an  average ^ne  franc  seventy-five  centimes  per  day,  washing  gold  from  the 
sands  of  the  river ;  but,  as  under  most  circumstances  he  can  earn  ten  sous 
more  by  working  in  the  fields  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  and  without  so 
much  risk  of  getting  rheumatism,  gold-washing  on  the  Rhine  is  not  often 
adopted  as  a  regular  employment. 


GOLD,  AND  HOW  THEY  CAME   TO   USE  IT.  43 

numbers,  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  encouragement  growing 
out  of  the  hope  of  suddenly  enriching  themselves  through  the 
chance  discovery  of  a  great  nugget  (as  sometimes  happened), 
the  mines  would  have  been  entirely  deserted.  As  it  was,  the 
supply  of  gold  greatly  fell  off,  and,  the  demand  for  it  remain- 
ing about  the  same,  the  purchasing  power  of  the  stock  on 
hand  for  other  commodities  gradually  increased,  until  it  came 
about  that  the  result  of  an  average  day's  labor  in  digging 
gold  was  found  to  buy  tnore  than  the  result  of  an  average 
day's  labor  in  other  occupations.  But  as  soon  as  this  was  ob- 
served, an  additional  supply  of  labor  went  back  to  gold-min- 
ing, and  continued  to  follow  it,  until  an  equalization  of  results 
from  effort  in  gold-digging  and  effort  in  other  corresponding 
employments  was  again  established,  as  before  related.  And 
this  interchange  of  employments  and  equalization  of  results 
from  labor  went  on,  year  by  year,  until  at  last  the  peoj)le,  as  it 
were  by  instinct,  found  out  that  a  given  quantity  of  gold  rep- 
resented more  permanently  a  given  amount  of  a  certain  grade 
or  kind  of  human  labor  or  effort  than  any  other  one  substance. 
And  the  moment  this  fact  became  apparent,  the  people  on  the 
island  for  the  first  time  also  clearly  perceived  that  gold,  in  ad- 
dition to  the  universal  exchanging  quality  or  purchasing  pow- 
er which  it  had  before  naturally  acquii'ed,  from  the  circum- 
stance that  every  body  from  the  time  of  its  first  discovery 
wanted  it,  had  further  acquired  two  other  attributes,  which 
fitted  it,  above  all  things  else,  to  serve  as  money ;  namely,  and 
first,  that  it  had  become  a  measure  or  standard  of  value,  by 
which,  as  by  a  yard-stick,  the  comparative  value  of  all  other 
commodities  might  be  measured  or  estimated ;  and,  second, 
that  its  value  or  purchasing  power  was  so  constant  and  contin- 
uously inherent  in  itself,  even  under  circumstances  when  the 
value  of  most  other  commodities  would  be  destroyed,  that  the 


44:  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

greatest  security  or  guarantee  whicli  any  person  owning  gold 
could  possibly  have  of  its  remaining  valuable  to  him  for  any 
length  of  time  was,  that  the  owner  should  simply  keep  pos- 
session of  it. 

By  no  portion  of  people  on  the  island  was  this  last  attribute 
regarded  so  much  in  the  light  of  a  blessing  as  by  the  poor  old 
men  and  women.  As  a  general  rule,  they  earned  but  little 
more  than  sufficed  to  support  them,  and  they  were  therefore 
always  naturally  very  anxious  lest  what  little  they  saved  should 
be  impaired  in  value  or  made  worthless  by  keeping,  before  the 
time  when  they  might  especially  need  it  to  pay  for  doctors  and 
medicine,  or  insure  them  a  decent  burial.  The  cowry  money, 
which  had  before  represented  their  hard  toil  and  personal  depri- 
vation, had  turned  out,  on  keeping,  to  be  only  worthless  shells ; 
the  bead  money  had  become  valueless  when  it  became  unfash- 
ionable ;  the  cattle  money  had  to  be  fed  every  day  to  keep  it 
from  experiencing  a  heavy  discount,  and  penned  up  every 
night  to  prevent  it  from  walkuig  off ;  the  wheat  money  was 
always  liable  to  be  injured  by  damp  or  devoured  by  vermin ; 
while  twenty  pounds  of  pig-iron  had  proved  too  heavy  for 
their  old  limbs  to  carry  to  the  store  every  time  they  wanted 
to  purchase  a  little  cloth  or  tobacco.  But  here  was  some- 
thing at  last  wliich  completely  satisfied  the  necessities  of  their 
situation,  and  enabled  them  to  feel  certain  that,  whether  they 
buried  it  in  the  ground,  where  it  was  always  damp  and  moldy ; 
or  put  it  in  the  chimney,  where  it  was  always  hot  and  smoky ; 
or  lived  at  one  end  of  the  island  among  the  heathen,  or  at 
the  other  end  among  the  Christians,  would  always,  year  in  and 
year  out,  buy  about  the  same  average  quantity  of  all  sorts 
of  things ;  and  which,  when  offered  in  payment  for  serv- 
ices or  commodities,  to  the  doctor,  lawyer,  merchant,  druggist, 
undertaker,  mason,  or   tailor;   to   the  Yankee,  Irish,  Dutch, 


GOLD,  AND  HOW  TREY  CAME  TO   USE  IT.  45 

Turk,  or  Hindoo ;  to  the  governor  of  Ohio,  or  a  senator  from 
Indiana,  did  not  require  any  of  them  to  look  in  a  book,  exam- 
ine a  law,  read  the  Bible,  or  hunt  up  the  resolutions  of  the 
last  Congress  or  political  convention,  to  tell  how  much  it  was 
worth,  or  whether  it  was  safe  to  take  and  keep  it. 

There  was  a  very  wise  man  on  the  island  who  objected  to 
the  use  of  gold  as  money,  for  the  reason  that  he  felt  afraid 
that  the  poor  old  women  who  wanted  to  feel  certain  of  having 
always  something  of  reliable  value  in  their  possession  would 
fill  their  old  stockings  with  it  and  hoard  it.*  But  he  was  soon 
shut  up  by  some  one  asking  him,  why,  if  the  old  women  want- 
ed to  keep  something  by  them  perfectly  secure  against  a  rainy 
day,  and  slept  better  nights  because  they  knew  they  had  it, 
they  shouldn't  be  allowed  that  privilege  ?  and  if  there  could 
be  any  possible  reason  why  any  one  should  object  to  the  old 
women  hoarding  gold,  except  that  he  wanted  to  cheat  and 
wrong  the  poor  by  compelling  them  to  keep  their  hard-earned 
savings  in  something  whose  value  was  not  certain,  and  which 
might  have  no  value  whatever  when  it  came  time  to  pay  the 
doctor  or  the  undertaker  ? 

When  the  people  on  the  island  first  began  to  use  gold  as 
money,  they  carried  it  around  with  them  in  the  form  in  which 
it  was  first  found ;  the  fine  dust  or  scales  inclosed  in  quills, 
and  the  nuggets  in  bags;  or  they  melted  and  hammered  it  into 

*  "And  when  the  substitution  is  made"  (of  a  silver  for  a  paper  fraction- 
al currency),  "  what  will  be  the  consequence  ?  The  metal  currency  will 
have  to  be  considerably  debased,  or  else  every  old  woman  in  the  country 
wiU  fill  her  stockings  with  it  and  bury  it.  It  will  be  hoarded,  sir ;  hoarded 
to  the  extent  of  removing  millions  from  the  currency  of  the  country."  The 
general  paused,  glared  at  a  village  wrapped  in  rain,  by  which  we  were  rat- 
tling, chewed  his  cigar  vigorously,  and  lapsed  into  silence. — A  Neivspaper 
Reporter's  Interview  with  General  Butler,  September,  1875. 


46  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

large  lumps  and  bars  ;*  and,  as  the  purchasing  power  of  the 
gold  was  always  proportioned  to  its  weight  and  purity,  ev- 
ery body  carried  round  with  hira  small  scales  and  tests  with 
which  he  proved  the  gold  before  making  exchanges  with  it 
(the  same  as  is  customary  at  the  present  day  in  China).  But 
this  method  involved  great  inconveniences;  and  although 
the  statement  of  a  person  of  recognized  honesty  that  he  had 

• 

proved  the  value  of  the  gold  he  offered  in  payment  was  gener- 
ally accepted,  it  was  nevertheless  recognized  that  there  was  no 
more  unfairness  or  discourtesy  in  the  claim  of  the  grocer  to 
test  the  quality  of  the  money  of  his  customer  by  scales  and 
acids,  than  there  was  in  the  claim  of  the  customer  to  test,  by 
tasting,  the  salt  and  sugar  of  the  grocer.  As  might  be  infer- 
red, therefore,  it  often  required  a  good  deal  of  time  to  com- 
plete the  most  ordinary  exchanges,  and  people  everywhere 
complained  about  it  and  wrote  letters  to  the  newspapers.  Mer- 
chants who  were  very  cautious  and  particular,  irritated  their 
customers,  and  got  the  reputation  of  being  very  exacting  and 
distrustful ;  while  merchants  who  had  but  little  capital  and 
wanted  to  get  business,  advertised  they  would  take  gold  on 
the  simple  word  of  their  customers.  But  it  was  observed 
of  the  last,  that,  owing  to  being  constantly  cheated,  they  all, 
sooner  or  later,  failed.  At  last  the  difficulty  was  remedied  by 
a  series  of  happy  circumstances. 

Robinson  Crusoe  had,  some  years  before  this,  died,  at  a  good 
old  age,  as  had  also  Will  Atkins,  and  all  the  sailors  who  had 
come  with  him  to  the  island  from  other  countries ;  so  that 
there  were  none  now  on  the  island  who  had  ever  known  any 
thing  about  or  ever  seen  any  coined  money.     In  making  some 

*  Gold  in  its  crude  state,  and  uncoined,  was  until  recently  in  use  as 
money  in  some  parts  of  California,  Mexico,  and  on  the  West  Coast  of 
Africn. 


GOLD,  AND  SOW  THEY  CAME  TO   USE  IT.  47 

public  improvements,  however,  a  party  of  workmen  one  day 
broke  into  the  old  cave  in  which  Crusoe  had  first  lived  when 
he  escaped  from  the  shipwreck,  and  there,  in  the  dirt  beneath 
the  floor,  were  discovered  the  three  great  bags  of  money  which 
Crusoe  had  found  in  the  chest,  and  in  his  disgust  had  buried 
and  utterly  forgotten.  Every  body  at  once  recognized  the 
metal  to  be  gold,  and  was  perfectly  willing  to  exchange  oth- 
er commodities  for  it  with  the  finders,  the  same  as  he  was 
willing  to  do  for  any  other  gold.  But  why  it  should  be  in 
the  form  of  fiat  round  disks,  and  stamped  with  inscriptions 
and  images,  was  something  that  puzzled  every  body ;  and  the 
Antiquarian  and  Philosophical  Society  called  a  special  meet- 
ing to  discuss  the  subject.  Some,  looking  to  only  one  side  of 
the  pieces,  thought  they  were  medals  struck  to  commemorate 
some  distinguished  man,  or  a  woman,  whose  name  often  ap- 
peared to  be  "  Liberty."  Others,  who  looked  only  at  the  oth- 
er side,  thought  they  were  intended  to  signalize  a  great  con- 
test between  the  lion  and  the  unicorn,  or  to  make  the  peo- 
ple familiar  with  the  peculiarities  of  some  unnatural  bird  or 
beast,  which,  as  it  was  not  like  any  thing  either  in  the  heavens, 
or  on  the  earth,  or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth,  it  might  not 
be  sinful  to  worship. 

At  last,  after  the  flat  disks  or  coins  had  been  for  some  time 
in  circulation,  and  the  community  had  found  out,  by  repeated- 
ly weighing  and  testing  them,  that  each  disk  represented  a 
constant  weight  of  gold  of  uniform  purity,  the  idea  came  at 
once  to  every  one  that  the  only  use  of  the  fanciful  images 
and  inscriptions  on  the  disks  was  to  oflicially  testify  to  the 
fact  of  their  uniformity  of  weight  and  value ;  and  then  every 
body  wondered  that  he  could  have  been  so  stupid  as  not  to 
have  before  recognized  the  idea  and  adopted  it,  in  place  of 
every  man  .weighing,  cutting  up,  and  testing  his  gold  every 


48  BOBIXSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

time  lie  desired  to  part  with  or  receive  it  in  making  an  ex- 
change. An  arrangement  was  accordingly  at  once  made  for 
a  public  estabhshment — afterward  called  a  mint — to  which 
every  person  who  so  desired  could  bring  his  gold  and  receive 
it  back  again  after  it  had  been  divided  into  suitable  pieces 
of  determinate  weight  and  fineness ;  the  fact  that  the  weight 
and  fineness  of  each  piece  had  been  so  proved  being  indicated 
by  appropriate  marks  upon  the  metal.  And  in  this  manner 
"  coined  money  "  first  came  into  use  on  the  island.  And  by 
this  time,  also,  the  money  which  Robinson  Crusoe  found  in 
the  chest,  and  which,  when  it  fii-st  came  into  his  possession, 
had  neither  utility,  value,  nor  use  as  a  standard,  or  measure 
of  value,  had  gradually  acquired  all  these  several  attributes : 
utility,  when  the  material  of  which  it  was  composed  became 
capable  of  satisfying  some  human  desire  for  it,  as  an  orna- 
ment, as  a  symbol  of  worship,  or  for  some  mechanical  or 
chemical  purpose;  value  (the  sole  result  of  labor),  when  it 
became  an  object  of  or  equivalent  in  exchange,  or  acquired 
a  power  of  purchasing  other  things;  a  standard,  or  meas- 
ure of  value,  when  its  purchasing  power,  by  reason  of  various 
circumstances,  was  foimd  to  be,  if  not  absolutely  permanent, 
at  least  more  permanent,  on  the  average,  than  that  of  any 
other  commodity. 

The  conversion  of  money  into  coin  was  something  purely 
artificial,  and  the  result  of  law,  or  statute  enactments,  the  sole 
object  of  which  was  simply  to  make  the  money  (previously  in 
use)  true  and  in  the  highest  degree  convenient.  But,  as  has 
already  been  pointed  out,  money  came  into  use  in  the  first  in- 
stance without  statute,  and  was  the  result,  as  it  were,  of  men's 
instincts ;  and  the  subsequent  choice  by  them  of  gold,  in  pref- 
erence to  any  other  commodities  for  use  as  money,  was  for 
reasons  similar  to  those  which  induced  men  to  choose  silk, 


GOLD,  AND  HOW  THEY  CAME   TO   USE  IT.  49 

wool,  flax,  and  cotton  as  materials  for  clothing ;  and  stone, 
brick,  and  timber  as  materials  for  houses.  It  was  the  thing 
best  adapted  to  supply  the  want  needed. 

The  introduction  and  use  of  coined  money  at  once  gave  an 
impetus  to  business,  and  made  the  people  richer,  because  it 
saved  time  and  labor  in  making  exchanges,  and  relieved  ev- 
ery man  from  the  trouble  and  expense  of  buying  and  carrying 
round  with  him  scales  and  other  tests.  The  only  persons  dis- 
satisfied were  the  scale-makers,  who  found  their  business  al- 
most destroyed,  and  they  petitioned  the  authorities  to  have 
their  interests  protected  by  the  enactment  of  a  law  compelling 
all  persons  to  weigh  their  coins  with  scales  before  exchanging, 
as  formerly  they  did  their  gold.  But,  as  every  body  at  once 
saw  that  the  effect  of  such  a  law  would  be  equivalent  to  com- 
pelling all  exchangers  to  do  useless  work,  the  petition  amount- 
ed to  nothing. 

For  convenience  in  speaking  and  writing,  also,  each  piece  of 
gold  or  coin  of  determinate  weight  and  fineness  regularly  is- 
sued by  the  mint  received  a  particular  name  and  had  a  par- 
ticular device  impressed  on  it.  Thus,  for  example,  the  piece 
of  lowest  denomination,  containing  25.8  grains  of  standard 
gold,  which  had  on  it  a  likeness  of  Crusoe's  old  and  faithful 
servant,  was  called  a  "  Friday ;"  a  piece  of  ten  times  its  weight 
and  value,  with  a  small  portrait  of  the  founder  of  the  island 
community,  was  called  a  "  Crusoe ;"  and  a  piece  of  double  the 
weight  of  the  last,  or  twenty  times  the  weight  of  the  first,  with 
a  large  portrait  on  it,  was  called  a  "  Robinson  Crusoe  "  or  a 
"  double  Crusoe."  Some  time  after,  when  the  island  became 
generally  known  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  it  was  found  that 
these  coins  exactly  corresponded  in  weight,  fineness,  and  value 
with  those  adopted  in  that  foreign  country  called  the  United 
States,  and  there  known  under  the  names  of  the  gold  dollar, 

4 


50  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

eagle,  and  double-eagle ;  and  after  a  time,  for  the  purpose  of 
favoring  the  development  of  civilization  and  assimilating  na- 
tionahties  by  the  adoption  of  a  common  monetary  standard, 
it  was  agreed  to  discard  all  local  sentiments,  and  to  substitute 
the  latter  names  for  the  former. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

HOW  THE  ISLANDEKS  DETERMINED  TO   BE  AN  HONEST 
AND  FREE  PEOPLE. 

Next  came  the  consideration  of  the  laws  regulating  the 
exchanges  and  the  use  of  money.  Some  people  wanted  laws 
enacted  that  every  person  should  be  obliged  to  sell  and  part 
with  any  thing  he  o\\Tied,  provided  a  nominal  or  real  equiva- 
lent in  what  the  State  should  declare  money  should  be  offered 
him ;  and,  also,  that  when  any  person  had  bought  commodities 
and  services  of  another,  and  had  promised  to  pay  for  them 
after  a  time,  he  might  fully  discharge  the  obligation  by  ten- 
dering that  which  the  State  said  was  money,  no  matter  wheth- 
er in  the  mean  time  the  persons  in  charge  of  the  mint  had,  for 
any  reasons,  taken  out  one-half  the  valuable  gold  in  the  coins, 
and  substituted  in  its  place  comparatively  worthless  lead. 

But,  to  the  honor  of  the  islanders,  these  propositions  met  with 
little  favor.  They  said,  we  mean  to  be  an  honest  and  also  a 
free  people ;  and,  therefore,  every  one  in  buying  or  selhng  shall 
do  exactly  what  he  has  agreed  to  do ;  unless,  by  reason  of 
some  unforeseen  or  unavoidable  circumstances,  he  is  absolutely 
unable  to  perform  his  agreement  or  contract.  And  they  said, 
further,  that  if  any  one  receives  commodities  and  services,  and 
promises  to  give,  five  years  or  five  minutes  afterward,  in  re- 


THE    SURVIVAL    OF    THK    HTTEST. 


THE  ISLANDERS  DETERMINED   TO  BE  HONEST.  53 

turn,  an  agreed-upon  quality  and  quantity  of  gold,  wheat,  cod- 
fish, or  cabbages,  it  shall  be  considered,  as  in  truth  it  is,  dis- 
honest to  attempt  to  discharge  the  obligation  by  offering  pig- 
iron  in  the  place  of  gold,  pease  or  beans  in  the  place  of  wheat, 
soft-shell  crabs  in  the  place  of  cod-fish,  or  pumpkins  in  the 
place  of  cabbages ;  and  any  community  which  shall  in  any 
way  sanction  any  such  evasion  of  the  letter  or  spirit  of  its  ob- 
ligations can  have  no  rightful  claim  to  call  itself  an  honest, 
Christian  people ;  and  if  any  community  enacts  and  maintains 
laws  coinjpelling  any  person  to  receive  in  exchange,  or  in  pay 
for  his  services  or  products,  something  which  he  did  not  agree 
to  and  would  not  otherwise  receive,  such  a  community  has  no 
rightful  claim  to  call  itself  a  free  community.  The  people  on 
the  island,  therefore,  decided  that  they  would  allow  the  island 
authorities  to  interfere  with  exchanges  to  this  extent  only: 
that  the  medium  of  exchange  and  measure  of  values  that  they 
had  adopted  and  called  a  Friday,  or  a  dollar,  should  always 
and  under  all  circumstances  contain  25.8  grains  of  standard 
gold ;  that  this  standard  should  never  be  departed  from ;  and 
that  although  no  one  should  be  compelled  to  use  it,  yet  when- 
ever any  one  talked  about  or  promised  to  pay  or  give  money, 
without  specifying  whether  the  money  should  be  wampum 
money,  bead  money,  cattle  money,  gold  money,  or  any  other 
particular  kind  of  money,  the  money  issued  by  the  acknowl- 
edged authorities  of  the  island  should  be  understood  and  ac- 
cepted as  what  was  meant.  In  short,  like  sensible  men,  the 
islanders  concluded  that  as  long  as  they  maintained  in  com- 
mon use  a  real,  good,  and  true  money,  which  carried  on  its 
face  evidence  (easily  read  and  known  of  all  men)  of  its  value 
or  purchasing  power,  there  was  little  use  of  cumbering  up  the 
statute-book  with  any  thing  about  legal  tender.  They  would 
leave  that  to  other  people  wiser  than  they  were,  wlio  desired 


54 


EOBIXSOX  CRUSOE'S  MONET. 


to  use  money  that  would  not  circulate,  except  it  had  some  arti- 
ficial power  or  agency  back  of  it  to  make  it  go. 

After  this,  every  thing  for  a  time  pertaining  to  trade  and 
commerce  went  on  very  smoothly  on  the  island.  It  is  true 
there  were  bad  persons  who  obtained  commodities  and  serv- 
ices on  credit  for  which  they  never  intended  to  pay ;  careless 
and  extravagant  persons  who  bought  more  than  they  were 
able  to  pay  for;  and  foolish  and  oversanguine  people  who, 
after  having  by  labor  and  economy  accumulated  a  good  store 
of  commodities,  exchanged  them  for  shares  in  enterprises 
which  never  could  pay.  And  when  people  by  one  or  more  of 
such  methods  lost  the  results  of  their  hard  labor  and  toil,  they 
naturally  felt  depressed,  lost  confidence  in  their  fellow -men, 
and  thought  times  and  things  might  be  improved  by  turning 
all  those  in  oflice  out,  and  putting  new  men  in.  But  no  one 
on  the  island  ever  for  a  moment  imagined  that  there  was  any 
way  to  honestly  replace  the  money  they  had  lost,  except  by 
acquiring  through  industry  and  economy  a  new  store  of  use- 
ful commodities  with  which  to  buy  money ;  and  no  one  who 
ever  had  any  thing  to  sell  which  others  in  the  community 
wanted,  and  were  able  to  give  in  return  a  fair  equivalent,  ever 
found  himself  in  want  of  money  or  a  market;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  no  one  who  had  nothing  to  sell  which  the  com- 
munity wanted  or  were  able  to  pay  for  ever  succeeded  in  ob- 
taining either  money  or  a  market. 


THE  PEOPLE  SUBSTITUTE   CURRENCY  FOB  MONEY.     55 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

HOW  THE  PEOPLE  ON  THE  ISLAND  CAME   TO  USE  CURRENCY 
IN  THE  PLACE  OF  MONEY. 

As  time  went  on,  changes  in  the  method  of  doing  business 
gradually  occiuTed  on  the  island.  Instead  of  being  an  isola- 
ted and  unknown  community,  their  existence  as  an  organized, 
civilized  state  became  generally  known  to  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  a  brisk  trade  and  commerce  resulted  from  the  exchange 
of  the  products  of  the  island  for  the  products  of  other  coun- 
tries. An  excellent  harbor  existed  at  each  end  of  the  island, 
and  about  these  points  the  population  naturally  aggregated, 
and  built  up  two  very  considerable  towns.  The  middle  of  the 
island,  on  the  other  hand,  was  elevated  into  high  mountain 
ranges,  covered  with  dense  forests,  in  crossing  which  travelers 
journeying  between  the  two  cities  were  often  robbed  of  all 
the  gold  they  carried  about  them.  To  obviate  this  danger,  and 
avoid  the  necessity  of  carrying  gold,  persons  living  at  opposite 
ends  of  the  island,  therefore,  adopted  a  system  of  giving  writ- 
ten orders  for  money  on  each  other,  which  each  reciprocally 
agreed  to  pay  to  the  person  whose  name  was  written  in  the 
order  or  draft,  and  then  periodically  settled  or  balanced  their 
accounts  by  offsetting  one  order  or  payment  against  another. 
In  this  way  value  or  purchasing  power  was  transmitted  long 
distances  much  more  cheaply  and  conveniently  than  could  be 
effected  by  the  transmission  of  gold  itself ;  and  also  much  more 
safely,  inasmuch  as  the  thieves  could  make  no  use  of  the  or- 
ders, even  if  they  obtained  them.     And  thus  it  was  that  the 


56  EOBINSON  CEUSOE'S  MONEY. 

people  on  the  island  became  acquainted  with  and  first  used 
what  were  afterward  known  as  ''■hills  of  exchange.''''^ 

This  labor  -  saving  and  danger  -  avoiding  device,  moreover, 
proved  so  useful,  that  the  idea  soon  suggested  itself  that  by 
an  extension  of  the  principle  involved  in  the  bill  of  exchange 
the  necessity  of  carrying  gold  at  all  in  any  quantity  might  also 
be  avoided.  A  public  office  was  therefore  established,  where 
people  might  deposit  their  gold  under  the  guardianship  of  the 
state,  and  receive  a  ticket  or  receipt  for  the  amount,  payable 
in  coin  on  demand ;  which  tickets,  from  the  fact  that  every  body 
knew  that  they  were  convertible  into  gold  at  will,  and  that  no 
more  tickets  were  issued  than  corresponded  to  gold  actually  de- 
posited and  retained,  soon  came  to  be  regarded  as  equally  good 
and  valid  as  gold  itself,  and  vastly  more  convenient  for  the 
purpose  of  making  exchanges.  And  thus  it  was  that  currency 
(from  the  Latin  curro,  to  run)  originated  and  came  into  use  on 
the  island  as  a  substitute  and  representative  of  money.f     The 

*  Historically,  bills  of  exchange  probably  originated  with  the  Jews  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  who,  ever  liable  to  persecution,  adopted  a  system  of 
drafts,  or  written  orders,  upon  one  another,  which  each  agreed  to  honor 
and  pay  to  the  person  named  in  the  draft. 

t  It  was  in  this  manner  that  the  first  bank  of  which  we  have  any  record 
originated  in  1171,  namely,  the  Bank  of  the  Eepublic  of  Venice.  Venice 
in  that  year  was  at  war  and  needed  money.  The  Council  of  Ten,  or  the 
Government,  called  upon  the  merchants  to  bring  in  their  gold  or  coin  into 
the  public  treasury,  and  gave  credit  on  the  books  of  the  state  for  the 
amounts  so  deposited;  which  credits  carried  interest  (always  promptly 
paid)  at  the  rate  of  four  per  cent,  per  annum.  Soon  after  the  establish- 
ment of  this  bank  one  of  the  depositors  died ;  and  it  becoming  necessary 
to  distribute  his  estate  among  five  children,  his  bank-credit  was  divided 
into  five  portions  and  transferred  to  five  new  owners.  A  system  of  trans- 
ferring bank-credits  was  thus  introduced,  and  proved  so  useful  that  in  a 
brief  time  the  merchants  adopted  it  very  generally  as  a  means  of  paying 


THE  PEOPLE  SUBSTITUTE  CURRENCY  FOR  MONEY.      57 

name  originally  given  to  these  receipts  was  first  "  bank-cred- 
its," and  then  "  bank-notes,"  but  after  a  time  people  acquired  a 
habit  of  designating  them  as  "  paper  money."  But  this  latter 
term  was  conceded  to  be  but  a  mere  fiction  of  speech  and  a 
bad  use  of  language ;  for  every  intelligent  person  at  once  saw 
that  a  promise  to  deliver  a  commodity,  or  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  receipt  of,  or  a  title  to,  a  thing,  could  not  possibly 
be  the  commodity  or  the  thing  itself,  any  more  than  a  shadow 
could  be  the  substance,  or  the  picture  of  a  horse  a  horse,  or 
the  smell  of  a  good  dinner  the  same  as  the  dinner  itself. 

Nevertheless,  as  an  instrumentality  for  transferring  com- 
modities used  for  money,  and  avoiding  the  loss  and  waste  un- 
avoidable in  handling  and  transporting  such  commodities,  the 
currency  thus  devised  was  a  great  invention,  and  being  always 
represented  by,  or,  as  we  may  express  it,  covered  with,  the  com- 
modity— gold — which,  of  all  things,  fluctuates  least  in  value,  it 
perfectly  answered  the  purpose  of  money,  without  actually  be- 
ing so.  It  also  furnished  another  striking  illustration  of  the 
superiority  of  the  commodity  gold  to  serve  either  as  money 
or  as  an  object  of  value  for  deposit,  against  which  receipts  or 
certificates  of  deposit  might  be  issued  to  serve  as  currency; 
for  if  other  valuable  commodities,  like  cattle,  corn,  cloth,  or 
coal,  had  been  selected  for  a  like  purpose,  the  bank  would 
have  been  obliged  to  erect  large  pens,  sheds,  and  warehouses 
for  the  storing  of  the  deposits ;  and,  let  them  be  guarded  ever 
so  carefully,  their  value  or  purchasing  power  would,  after  a 
time,  rapidly  diminish  from  natural  and  unavoidable  causes. 

balances  in  all  great  business  transactions.  The  banks  of  Amsterdam  and 
of  Hamburg  were  also  subsequently  established  on  substantially  the  same 
basis,  and  are  doing  business  to-day  successfully.  The  Bank  of  Venice 
did  business  for  five  hundred  years ;  during  -which  period  the  state  was 
prosperous,  and  there  were  few  failures  among  the  mercantile  classes. 


58 


IIOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


^^^^^B 

,==r^S= 

m     1 

'  'Hip 

.^^ 

— 

l~"~^              — =:z: 

:- 

' 

A   SHADOW   IS    NOT   A   SUBSTANCE. 


The  value  of  most  commodities,  even  in  a  perfect  condition, 
furthermore  differs  so  much  by  reasons  of  mere  locality,  that 
there  could  be  no  possible  uniformity  in  the  value  of  the  re- 
ceipt for  the  deposit  of  one  and  the  same  article,  issued  by 
banks  in  different  places,  to  serve  as  currency ;  the  value  or 
purchasing  power  of  a  ton  of  coal,  or  a  fat  ox,  being  one  thing 
at  the  mouth  of  a  coal-mine  or  on  a  prairie  stock-farm,  and 


THE  PEOPLE  SUBSTITUTE   CURRENCY  FOR  MONEY.      59 

quite  a  different  thing  ten,  twenty,  or  a  hundred  miles  distant.  • 
But  in  the  case  of  gold,  the  space  needed  to  store  up  what 
represents  a  vast  value  is  very  small,  while  the  value  or  pur- 
chasing power  of  gold  not  only  is,  but  is  certain  to  remain,  on 
the  average,  very  constant  all  the  world  over.* 

*  If  to  any  it  may  seem  puerile  and  unnecessary  to  enter  into  such  ex- 
planations, it  may  be  well  to  remind  them  that  one  of  the  schemes  for  a 
new  currency,  which  has  of  late  found  some  earnest  advocates  in  the 
United  States,  is  that  of  Josiah  Warren,  of  Ohio,  who  projiosed  that  cur- 
rency "should  he  issued  hy  those  men,  women,  and  children  who  perform 
useful  service  " — i.  e.,  grow  corn,  mine  coal,  catch  cod-fish,  pick  up  chest- 
nuts and  the  like — "  but  by  nobody  else ;"  such  results  of  service  being  de- 
posited in  safe  receptacles,  and  having  receipts  of  deposit  issued  against 
them  to  serve  as  "  equitable  money."  A  further  axiom  of  Mr.  Warren  was, 
"  that  the  most  disagreeable  labor  "  (not  the  most  useful)  "  is  entitled  to 
the  highest  compensation ;"  and,  therefore,  inferentially  entitled  to  issue 
the  most  money.  A  specimen  of  this  equitable  money  before  the  writer 
reads  as  follows : 


© 
o 


The  most  disagreeable  labor  is  entitled  to  the  highest  compensation. 


Cincinnati, 

D^w  to  Bearer, 
EIGHT    HOURS'    LABOR, 


Ohio,    g 


William  Morton. 


No.  — ,  F Street. 


^     III  Shoe-making,  or  a  Hundred  Pounds  of  Corn.      « 


Of  course,  to  make  this  money  equitable,  and  its  issue,  as  claimed,  "  the 
satisfactory  solution  of  the  great  problem  of  labor  and  capital,"  there  must 
be  some  presupposed  equitable  relation  between  eight  hours  of  shoe-mak- 
ing and  a  hundred  pounds  of  corn.  But  one  hundred  pounds  of  corn  in 
Illinois  are  the  result  of  only  a  quarter  as  much  labor  as  a  hundred  pounds 
in  New  England ;  and  what  comparison  is  there  between  eight  hours'  work 
of  a  skilled  mechanic  and  that  of  a  mere  cobbler  iu  making  shoes  ?  or  of 
the  man  who  performs  a  disagreeable,  slavish  piece  of  work,  and  of  the 


60 


BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

WAR  WITH  THE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT. 

But  more  serious  matters  than  the  making  and  issuing  of 
money  soon  claimed  the  attention  of  the  people  of  the  island. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  Friday  was  fii'st  brought  to  the 

genius  who  invents  or  makes  a  macMne  that  makes  this  disagreeable 
work  unnecessary  ? 

E.  D.  Linton,  of  Boston,  one  of  Warren's  most  eminent  disciples,  improves 
on  Warren's  ideas,  and  proposes  that  the  United  States  Government  should 
prepare  and  issue  a  currency,  ■which  should  read  as  follows : 


TJie  United  States  will  pay  One  Dollar  to  Bearer,  on 

de7nand,  in bushels  of  Illinois  Fall  Wheat,  at  United 

States  No.  1  Store -house,  No.  13  Biver  Street,  Chicago, 
III. 


This  note  is  receivable  for  all  debts  dae  the  United  States. 


And  the  same  inferentially  in  respect  to  pigs,  coal,  shoes,  and  the  serv- 
ices of  doctors,  lawyers,  and  cooks.  So,  then,  if  the  note  is  not  to  be  on  its 
face  a  lie,  and  the  promise  is  to  be  actually  performed  on  demand,  the  ne- 
cessity will  be  absolute  on  the  part  of  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  to  have  store -houses  for  wheat  at  Chicago,  pig- iiens  at  Peoria, 
coal-mines  or  depots  at  PottsviUe,  and  trained  professionals  ready  on  call 
to  plead  a  case,  preach  a  sermon,  cure  a  cold,  and  cook  a  dinner;  and  all 
of  these  last  must  take  their  pay  in  pigs  if  required.  But  as  a  pig  has  one 
value  at  Peoria,  and  another  value  at  almost  every  other  jilace,  the  dollar's 
worth  of  pig  which  the  United  States  would  pay  might  be  a  whole  pig 
in  one  place,  a  half  in  another,  and  possibly  only  the  snout  in  another. 


WAR  WITH  THE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.     61 

island  by  the  cannibals,  for  the  purpose  of  being  cooked  and 
eaten,  and  that  he  was  rescued  from  this  fate  by  the  valor  of 
Robinson  Crusoe,  as  was  subsequently  also  Friday's  father  and 
others  of  his  countrymen.  But  the  cannibals,  although  then 
repulsed,  did  not  at  the  same  time  lose  their  appetites,  or  the 
remembrance  of  the  good  cheer  that  had  escaj)ed  them;  and 
meat  becoming  scarce  in  their  own  country,  they  projected  a 
grand  invasion  of  the  island,  with  the  intent  of  capturing  and 
cooking  Friday,  if  he  was  still  there,  or,  in  default  of  Friday, 
any  body  and  every  body  they  might  happen  to  catch.  The 
islanders  all  at  once,  therefore,  found  themselves  precipitated 
into  a  terrible  war,  and  were  obliged  to  struggle  not  only  for 
their  homes,  but  for  their  individual  existence. 

The  Government  was  active  and  energetic,  but  to  carry 
on  the  war  a  vast  expenditure  of  commodities  was  necessary ; 
and  as  the  Government  of  the  island — in  common  with  all 
other  governments  —  never  had,  or  could  have,  any  commod- 
ities or  money  to  buy  commodities  with,  other  than  what  it 
obtained  tlirongh  loans  and  taxes,  the  people,  one  and  all,  were 
called  upon  to  help.  There  was,  however,  some  fear  that  if 
the  calls  for  help  were  put  in  the  form  of  taxes,  the  fires  of 
patriotism  might  not  burn  as  brightly  as  was  desirable,  and  it 
was  therefore  deemed  expedient  to  say  little  about  taxes  at 
the  outset,  and  rely  mainly  on  loans,  to  be  repaid  after  the 
war  was  over. 

The  people,  on  their  side,  responded  most  cheerfully.  Some 
gave  one  thing  and  some  another.  Some  gave  service  as  sol- 
diers, laborers,  and  artificers;  others  contributed  timber  for 
canoes,  cloth  for  tents,  iron  for  spear-heads  and  guns,  corn  and 
flour,  hay,  medicines,  and  money — in  short,  all  sorts  of  useful 
things,  the  results  of  previous  labor  and  economy  on  the  part 
of  the  individual  contributors.     In  return,  the  contributors  re- 


62  BOBIXSOX  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

ceived  back  from  the  Government  a  promise,  expressed  on  pa- 
per, to  repay  the  commodities  borrowed,  or  their  value  in  mon- 
ey. These  promises  were  of  two  kinds.  In  one  the  promise 
was  made  definite  as  to  the  time  of  its  fulfillment,  and  the 
amount  or  value  of  the  promise  carried  interest.  These  were 
called  bonds.  In  the  other,  the  promise,  although  definite, 
specified  no  particular  time  for  making  it  good,  and  its  amount 
or  value  was  not  subject  to  interest.  These  latter,  from  the 
circumstance  that  they  were  written  on  blue  paper,  were  pop- 
ularly termed  "  bluebacks."  When  the  people  got  the  bonds, 
they  put  them  carefully  away,  for  the  sake  of  the  interest  that 
would  accumulate  upon  them;  but  w^hen  they  got  the  blue- 
backs,  they  were  at  first  at  a  loss  to  know  what  to  do  with 
them.  They  were  in  some  respects  unlike  any  thing  they 
had  ever  seen  before ;  and  yet  there  was  a  very  close  resem- 
blance between  them  and  the  certificates  of  deposits  of  gold 
in  the  public  repository,  which  they  had  now  been  in  the  habit 
for  some  time  of  using  as  currency.  And  as  the  one  prom- 
ised, on  the  part  of  the  Government,  to  pay  money  equally 
with  the  other,  there  seemed  to  the  public  to  be  no  good  rea- 
son why  one  should  not  be  used  as  the  representative  and 
equivalent  of  money  as  readily  as  the  other. 

The  real  difference  was,  that  tlieir  former  currency,  com- 
posed of  tickets  or  certificates  given  in  exchange  for  a  de- 
posit of  actual  gold,  represented  an  actual  accumulation  of 
an  equivalent  of  every  thing  desirable  which  labor  could 
produce  all  the  world  over ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
promises  to  pay  which  the  island  authorities  issued  in  ex- 
change for  the  commodities  loaned  them  by  the  people,  and 
subsequently  used  up  in  fighting  the  cannibals,  represented 
an  actual  destruction  of  almost  every  thing  useful  and  desira- 
ble in  place  of  accumulation.     The  people,  however,  did  not 


WAR   WITH  THE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.     63 

see  this ;  and  by  reason  of  not  seeing  it  they  continued  to  ac- 
cept and  regard  the  promises  to  pay,  which  represented  loss 
and  destruction,  as  the  same  thing  as  money,  and  naturally 
also  as  wealth ;  and  as  the  creation  and  issue  of  this  sort  of 
money  or  wealth  increased  as  destruction  increased,  they  final- 
ly, one  and  all,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  more  and  fast- 
er they  destroyed,  the  richer  they  should  all  be ;  and  that,  by 
a  happy  series  of  accidents,  they  had  at  last  solved  that  great 
problem  which  the  world  had  so  long  been  anxious  about — 
namely, "  of  how  to  eat  your  cake  and  at  the  same  time  keep 
it."  And,  as  a  further  illustration  of  the  extent  to  which  this 
idea  acquired  a  hold  upon  the  public  mind,  it  may  be  mention- 
ed that  some  of  the  most  popular  books  which  were  published 
about  this  time  on  the  island  had  the  following  suggestive 
titles :  "^  National  Deht  a  National  Blessing  /"  ^^DonH  Pay 
as  you  Go,  a  sure  Way  to  Get  Richf  '■'■Pulling  at  your 
Boot-strajps  the  hest  Way  to  Pise  in  the  World^''  and  the  like. 
Undoubtedly  one  great  reason  which  encouraged  the  people 
of  the  island  in  their  delusion  was  the  circumstance  that  the 
Government  promises  to  pay,  although  they  had  ceased  to  rep- 
resent accumulation,  or  a  definite  equivalent  of  any  thing  in 
particular,  did  not  thereby  cease  to  be  instrumentalities  for  ef- 
fecting exchanges ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  continued  to  consti- 
tute great  labor-saving  machines,  performing  a  work  precisely 
similar  in  character  to  that  performed  by  a  ship  or  a  locomo- 
tive— namely,  the  removal  of  obstacles  between  the  producer 
and  consumer.  But,  in  becoming  a  representative  of  a  debt 
to  he  paid  in  place  of  representing  a  means  of  paying  a  deht, 
the  new  currency  lost  at  once  the  really  most  important  quality 
of  good  money  ;  inasmuch  as  it  ceased  to  be  a  common  equiv- 
alent, or  Ml  itself  an  object  of  value  in  excliange,  and  there- 
fore became  incapable  of  properly  discharging  the  function  of 


64:  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

a  standard,  or  measure,  for  estimating  the  comparative  value 
of  other  things ;  resembling,  in  this  deficiency,  a  ship  without 
a  rudder,  or  a  locomotive  without  a  track  to  run  on.  The  re- 
moval of  a  rudder  from  a  ship,  or  the  taking  up  the  track  in 
front  of  a  locomotive  does  not  impair  the  capacity  of  the  one 
for  cargo,  or  the  power  of  the  other  for  pulling.  But  if  it  is 
attempted  to  use  a  ship  or  a  locomotive  under  such  circum- 
stances for  the  purposes  for  which  they  were  constructed — i.e., 
as  agencies  for  eifecting  and  facilitating  exchanges — the  result 
of  their  work  will  be  so  uncertain  and  hazardous  that  the  own- 
ers of  the  things  to  be  exchanged  would  require  large  insurance 
against  the  possible  action  of  the  exchanging  agencies.  And 
so  it  was  with  this  bhieback  currency  of  the  island,  which, 
ceasing  to  represent  or  be  convertible  on  demand  into  a  con- 
stant quantity  of  any  commodity,  ceased  to  be  a  constant 
equivalent  or  measure  of  value  of  any  thing. 

If  the  news  came  one  day  that  the  cannibals  had  been  re- 
pulsed, a  given  number  of  the  bluebacks  would  buy  a  bushel 
of  wheat.  If  the  news  came  the  next  day  that  the  black 
troops,  although  they  had  fought  nobly,  had  been  driven  back, 
and  that  there  was  some  prospect  that  every  body,  sooner  or 
later,  would  be  cooked  and  eaten,  then  the  same  number  of 
bluebacks  bought  only  half  the  quantity  of  wheat.  Conse- 
quently, every  body,  in  selling  commodities  representing  ex- 
penditure of  time  and  labor,  added  to  the  price  of  the  same, 
in  order  to  insure  himself  against  the  fluctuations  of  the 
purchasing  power  of  the  currency  he  received;  or,  in  other 
words,  to  make  sure  that  what  he  received  should  remain, 
for  a  greater  or  less  length  of  time,  the  equivalent  of  what 
he  gave.  But  as  no  one  could  tell  what  the  cannibals  were 
likely  to  do  from  day  to  day,  and  therefore  what  were  to  be 


WAR  WITH  TEE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.     65 

the  fluctuations  in  the  purchasing  power  of  the  currency,  ev- 
ery body  in  selling  any  thing  felt  that  he  incurred  a  risk,  in 
addition  to  the  risks  usually  attendant  upon  ordinary  buying 
and  selling.  And  as  the  data  for  estimating  these  risks  were 
just  as  uncertain  as  the  data  for  estimating  the  results  of  dice- 
throwing,  every  body  guessed  at  the  amount  of  insurance 
needed,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  let  on  the  purchasing  pow- 
er of  the  currency  at  future  periods.  An  abnormal  gambling 
character,  therefore,  necessarily  became  a  part  of  every  busi- 
ness transaction,  and  worked  to  the  great  detriment  of  all  that 
class  of  people  on  the  islands,  who  had  only  labor  to  sell, 
which  loses  its  entire  value  for  the  time,  if  not  bought  at  the 
moment  it  is  offered  for  sale,  and  the  selling  price  of  which, 
when  once  established,  can  only  be  changed  with  difficulty. 
And  as  this  was  a  very  important  matter  in  the  iinancial  his- 
tory of  the  island,  it  is  desirable  to  illustrate  it  by  relating  the 
details  of  what  actually  happened : 

The  people  on  the  island  clothed  themselves  largely  in 
cloth  made  in  foreign  countries ;  and  as  the  island  currency 
was  non-exportable,  the  cloth  was  paid  for  by  exporting  gold, 
or  commodities  which  could  readily  be  exchanged  in  other 
countries  for  gold.  The  cloth  thus  purchased  with  gold  was 
made  np  into  clothing  by  the  "ready-made"  clothing  dealers 
in  the  cities,  and  sold  in  this  form  for  currency,  to  smaller 
or  retail  dealers  on  a  credit  of  from  three  to  six  or  nine 
months.  Had  the  currency  involved  in  this  transaction 
throughout  been  gold,  or  certificates  representing  deposits  of 
gold,  the  credit  price  of  the  ready-made  clothing  would  have 
been  the  cash  price,  with  a  small  amount  additional  to  repre- 
sent interest  on  the  credit-time,  and  a  possible  risk  of  non- 
payment; and  the  seller  would  never  for  one  moment  have 
taken  into  consideration  the  question  whether  the  currency, 

6 


Q6  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

or  representation  of  money  in  which  he  was  to  be  paid,  three, 
six,  or  nine  months  afterward,  would  have  the  same  value  or 
purchasing  power  that  it  had  on  the  day  the  debt  was  con- 
tracted. He  might  have  doubted  whether  his  customer  would 
pay  him  at  all,  but  he  never  would  as  to  the  quality  of  that 
which  he  was  entitled  to  receive  as  payment.  But  as  the 
currency  involved  in  so  much  of  the  transaction  as  occurred 
after  the  cloth  was  made  into  clothing  was  neither  gold  nor 
any  thing  which  represented  gold,  nor  any  other  valuable  com- 
modity, and  therefore,  like  a  ship  without  a  rudder,  or  a  loco- 
motive without  a  track,  was  sure  to  be  unreliable  as  an  ex- 
changing instrumentality,  the  seller  knew  to  a  certainty  that 
what  he  was  to  receive  in  payment  of  his  goods,  three,  six,  or 
nine  months  afterward,  would  not  have  the  same  value  or  pur- 
chasing power  that  it  had  on  the  day  the  debt  was  contracted. 
It  might  be  greater,  it  might  be  less ;  but  the  seller  never  bet 
on  the  former  contingency,  or  allowed  for  it  by  deducting 
any  thing  from  the  time  price  of  his  goods,  for  to  do  so  would 
be  to  discard  in  anticipation  a  possible  incidental  profit.  But 
he  always,  as  a  matter  of  safety,  felt  obliged  to  bet  on  the  lat- 
ter contingency,  and  then  cover  the  bet  by  adding  correspond- 
ingly to  the  price  of  every  thing  he  sold  on  credit.  "When, 
by  reason  of  the  disturbed  condition  of  things,  the  purchasing 
power  of  the  currency  fluctuated  greatly  in  brief  intervals,  the 
seller  on  all  his  time  sales  bet  in  favor  of  great  risks,  and  bet 
differently  every  day,  and  added  ten,  fifteen,  twenty,  or  even 
thirty  per  cent,  to  his  prices  over  and  above  the  general  ag- 
gregate representing  cost,  profit,  interest,  and  ordinary  risk, 
in  order  to  make  sure  of  receiving  currency  of  sufficient  pur- 
chasing value  to  enable  him  to  buy  back  as  much  gold  as  he 
was  obliged  to  give  for  the  cloth  originally. 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  the  fluctuations  in  the  purchasing 


I 


WAR  WITH  THE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.     67 

power  of  the  currency  became  limited,  the  insurance  percent- 
age added  to  price  became  also  limited,  and  followed  a  some- 
what general  rule.  Thus,  when  a  clothing-dealer  sold  goods 
on  three  months^  credit,  for  currency  whose  purchasing  power 
was  so  much  less  than  gold  that  it  took  one  hundred  and  fif- 
teen of  currency  to  buy  one  hundred  in  gold,  he  addedjffve per 
cent  to  his  sale  price,  or  he  bet  that  the  depreciation  of  cur- 
rency at  the  end  of  three  months  would  be  indicated  by  one 
hundred  and  twenty  for  gold ;  while  for  a  credit  longer  than 
three  months  he  bet  that  the  risk  of  depreciation  would  be 
greater,  and  added,  to  cover  this  risk,  an  average  of  ten  per 
cent,  to  his  price.  If  now,  at  the  end  of  three  months,  it  re- 
quired one  hundred  and  twenty -five  in  currency  to  buy  one 
hundred  in  gold,  the  dealer  lost  five  per  cent,  through  the 
payment  of  his  debt.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  fluctua- 
tion of  the  purchasing  power  of  the  currency  was  the  other 
way,  and  it  required  at  the  end  of  the  three  months  only  one 
hundred  and  ten  of  currency  to  buy  a  hundred  in  gold,  he 
made  ten  per  cent,  over  and  above  his  ordinary  and  legiti- 
mate profit,  while  an  equivalent  burden  or  loss  fell  on  the 
consumers.*     As  the  dealers  were  shrewd,  the  result  of  this 

*  Although,  to  all  who  have  investigated  the  subject,  the  evidence  is 
conclusive  that  an  irredeemable  fluctuating  paper  money  is  always  made 
an  agency  for  taxing  with  special  severity  all  that  class  of  consumers  who 
live  on  fixed  incomes,  salaries,  and  wages,  it  has,  nevertheless,  always  been 
a  somewhat  difficult  matter  to  find  illustrations  of  the  fact  so  clear  and 
simple  as  carry  conviction  by  presentation  that  it  does  thus  act  to  the 
classes  most  interested.  With  a  view  of  obtaining  such  an  illustration, 
application  was  made  some  months  since  to  an  eminent  American  mer- 
chant, whose  large  and  varied  experience  abundantly  qualified  him  to 
discuss  the  subject ;  and  the  result  of  the  application  may  be  thus  stated : 

Q.  In  buying  in  gold  and  selling  in  currency,  what  addition  do  yon 
make  to  your  selling  price,  in  the  way  of  insurance,  that  the  currency  re- 


68  BOBINSON  CRUSOWS  MONEY. 

betting  and  insurance  was  rarely  loss,  and  so  constantly  profit, 
that  some  dealers  after  a  while  came  to  regard  the  obtaining 

ceived  ■will  be  sufficieut — plus  profit,  interest,  etc.  —  to  replace  or  buy 
back  the  gold  represented  by  the  original  purchase  ? 

A.  We  do  but  very  little  of  that  now;  hardly  enough  to  speak  about. 

Q.  But  still  you  make  insurance  against  currency  fluctuations  an  item 
in  your  business  to  be  regarded  to  some  extent  ? 

A.  Why,  yes,  certainly ;  it  won't  do  to  overlook  it  entirely. 

Q.  Well,  then,  if  you  have  no  objections,  please  tell  me  what  you  do 
allow  under  existing  circumstances  ? 

A.  I  have  certainly  no  objections.  We  buy  closely  for  cash ;  sell  largely 
for  cash,  or  very  short  credit ;  and,  within  the  comparatively  narrow  limits 
that  currency  has  fluctuated  for  the  last  two  or  three  years,  add  but  little 
to  our  selling  prices  as  insurance  on  that  account — say  one  to  two  per 
cent,  for  cash,  or  three  months'  credit ;  and  for  a  longer  credit — if  we  give 
it — something  additional.  During  or  immediately  after  the  war,  when 
the  currency  fluctuations  were  more  extensive,  frequent,  and  capricious, 
the  case  was  very  difi"erent.  Then  selling  prices  had  to  be  watched  very 
closely,  and  changed  very  frequently — sometimes  daily.  My  present  ex- 
perience, therefore,  is  exceptional ;  and  to  get  the  information  you  want, 
you  must  look  further.  I  think  I  can  help  you  to  do  this.  We  buy  regu- 
larly large  quantities  of  a  foreign  product — let  us  suppose,  for  illustration, 
doth,  for  the  large  manufacturers  and  dealers  in  ready-made  clothing.  We 
buy  for  gold,  and  we  sell  for  gold,  and  do  not  allow  the  currency  or  its 
fluctuations  to  enter  in  any  way  into  these  transactions.  But  how  is  it 
with  my  customers  ?  I  allow  them  some  credit ;  and  the  amount  involved 
being  often  very  large,  I,  of  course,  must  know  something  of  the  way  in 
which  they  manage  their  busiuess.  They  transform  the  cloth,  purchased 
with  gold,  into  clothing;  and  then  sell  the  clothing,  in  turn,  to  tlieir  cus- 
tomers— ^jobbers  and  retailers — all  over  the  country,  for  currency,  on  a 
much  longer  average  credit  than  they  obtain  from  me  for  their  raw  mate- 
rial. As  a  matter  of  safety  and  necessity,  these  wholesale  dealers  and 
manufacturers  must  add  to  their  selling  prices  a  sufficient  percentage  to 
make  sure  that  the  currency  they  are  to  receive  at  the  end  of  three,  six, 
or  nine  months  will  be  sufficient  to  buy  them  as  much  gold  as  they  have 
paid  to  me,  or  as  much  as  will  buy  them  another  lot  of  cloth  to  meet  the 


WAR  WITH  THE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.     69 

of  this  species  of  profit  as  the  main  thing  for  which  all  busi- 
ness was  instituted ;  while  others,  more  clear-headed  and  dis- 
cerning, concluded  that  the  wisest  and  easiest  way  to  get  rich 
was  to  bet  directly  on  the  varying  quantity  of  currency  which 
it  would  take  from  day  to  day  to  buy  the  same  quantity  of 
gold,  or  other  valuable  commodities,  instead  of  attempting  to 
do  the  same  thing  indirectly,  through  the  agency  of  stores, 

further  demauds  of  their  business  aud  their  customers.  How  much  they 
thus  add  I  can  not  definitely  say.  There  is  no  regular  rule.  Every  man 
doubtless  adds  all  that  competition  will  permit ;  and  every  circumstance 
likely  to  affect  the  prospective  price  of  gold  is  carefully  considered. 
Five  per  cent.,  in  my  opinion,  on  a  credit  of  three  months  would  be  the 
average  minimum ;  and  for  a  longer  time,  a  larger  percentage.  If  compe- 
tition does  not  allow  any  insurance  percentage  to  be  added,  there  is  a 
liability  to  a  loss  of  capital,  which,  in  the  long  run,  may  be  most  disas- 
trous— a  circumstance  that  may  explain  the  wreck  of  many  firms,  whose 
managers,  on  the  old-fashioned  basis  of  doing  business,  would  have  been 
successful.  The  jobbers  and  the  retailers,  to  whom  the  wholesale  dealers 
and  manufacturers  sell,  are  not  so  likely  to  take  currency  insurance  into 
considerAtion  in  fixing  their  selling  prices ;  but  to  whatever  amount  the 
cost  price  of  their  goods  has  been  enhanced  by  the  necessity  of  insurance 
against  currency  fluctuations,  on  that  same  amount  they  estimate  and  add 
for  interest  and  profits ;  the  total  enhancement  of  prices  falling  ultimate- 
ly on  the  consumer,  who,  of  necessity,  can  rarely  know  the  elements  of 
the  cost  of  the  article  he  purchases. 

Q.  So  Mr.  Webster,  then,  in  his  remark,  which  has  become  almost  a 
proverb,  that  "  of  all  contrivances  for  cheating  the  laboring  classes,  none 
has  been  more  effectual  than  that  which  deludes  them  with  paper  money," 
must  have  been  thoroughly  cognizant  of  the  nature  of  such  transactions  ? 

A.  Most  undoubtedly;  for  such  transactions  are  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  using  as  a  medium  of  exchange  a  variable,  irredeemable  cur- 
rency. 

The  illustration  above  given,  therefore,  in  the  place  of  being  imaginary, 
is  based  on  the  actual  condition  of  business  at  the  present  time — January, 
1876. 


70 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


ONE   WAT   OF    BLOWING  A   DISSATISFIED    PARTY   OUT   OF    EXISTENCE. 

stocks  of  goods,  clerks,  books,  credits,  and  the  like.  The 
last,  accordingly,  wound  up  their  business,  and,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  day,  '^went  on  to  the  street,''^  and  made  their 
living  by  selling  on  time  what  they  did  not  possess,  and  buy- 
ing on  time  what  they  never  expected  to  receive,  and  reckon- 
ing profit  or  loss  according  to  the  difference  in  prices  grow- 


I 


WAR  WITH  THE  CANNIBALS,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.      71 

ing  out  of  the  fluctuations  of  the  currency  between  the  day 
of  buying  or  selling,  and  the  day  of  receiving  or  delivering. 
In  short,  as  with  the  magic  fiddle  in  the  fairy  tale,  which, 
when  played  upon,  made  every  body  dance,  no  matter  wheth- 
er in  the  brambles  or  on  the  plain,  so  the  use  on  the  island  of 
a  currency  which  continually  fluctuated  in  purchasing  power, 
because  it  was  not  a  constant  equivalent  of  any  thing,  made 
every  body  gamble  that  could ;  some  because  they  liked  to, 
and  others  because  they  had  to,  to  protect  themselves  from 
losses.  The  masses  who  could  not  conveniently  gamble  tried 
to  protect  themselves  by  asking  high  prices  in  return  for  their 
services,  or  by  giving  less  in  proportion  to  what  they  received  ;* 
but,  in  the  long  run,  they  learned  by  hard  experience  that  they 
were  not  as  well  off  as  they  expected  to  be ;  and  that  if  one 
effect  of  an  overabundant,  non-equivalent-to-any-thing  curren- 
cy was  to  stimulate  production,  another  and  greater  effect  of  it 
was  to  unequally  distribute  the  results  of  production,  transfer- 
ring from  those  who  had  little  to  those  who  had  much,  and 
thus  making  the  rich  richer,  and  the  poor  poorer. 

*  In  1864,  a  ship  was  built  in  New  York,  at  the  time  when  labor  and  ma- 
terials, reckoned  in  currency,  had  touched  their  highest  prices.  In  1870, 
another  ship  was  built  in  the  same  place  and  on  the  same  model — like 
the  former  in  every  particular.  It  was  expected  that,  as  wages  and  the 
cost  of  materials  were  less  in  1870  than  in  1864,  the  cost  of  the  latter  ship 
would  be  much  less  than  that  of  the  former ;  but  the  result  showed  that 
this  was  not  the  case. 


72  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


CHAPTER  X. 

AFTER    THE    WAR. 

At  last  the  war  ended.  The  cannibals  were  utterly  re- 
pulsed ;  and  the  islanders  no  longer  laid  awake  nights  for 
fear  of  being  roasted  and  eaten.  A  vast  amount  of  every 
thing  useful  had,  however,  been  necessarily  destroyed;  and  it 
would  seem  as  if  this  admitted  fact  would  have  made  the 
people  of  the  island  feel  poor.  But,  very  curiously,  it  did  not. 
The  promises  to  pay  for  the  commodities  destroyed  had  all 
been  preserved.  Tli'ey  were  regarded  by  almost  every  body 
as  money ;  and  if  money,  then,  of  course,  as  every  body  knew, 
they  were  wealth,  and  wealth  so  great  and  superabundant 
that  the  one  thing  especially  necessary  to  do  was  to  devise 
plans  for  using  it.  Every  body,  therefore,  devised  plans ;  those 
who  had  no  money  more  especially  devising  plans  for  those 
who  had.  All  sorts  of  schemes  were  accordingly  entered 
upon  ;  railroads  to  carry  people  to  the  isothermals  and  ev- 
ery other  place  where  they  didn't  want  to  go ;  and  oil-wells 
on  Cheat  and  Al(l)gon(e)quin  rivers,  and  patented  inventions 
for  making  substitutes  for  tea  and  coffee,  being  especially 
recommended  as  permanent  investments.  John  Law,  Lem- 
uel Gulliver,  Baron  Munchausen,  Sir  John  Mandeville,  Juan 
Ferdinand  Mendez- Pinto,  and  Sindbad  the  Sailor,  all  came 
to  town,  and  were  chronicled  in  the  newspapers  as  having 
registered  at  the  principal  hotels. 

Great  and  commendable  industry  was  also  displayed  in 
replacing  the  tilings  destroyed  by  the  war,  so  that,  for  a  time, 


AFTER  THE  WAR.  73 

the  societary  circulation  became  more  brisk  than  ever ;  while 
some  who  had  up  to  this  time  regarded  war  as  a  misfortune 
and  national  calamity,  now  felt  that  they  had  made  a  mistake ; 
and  others  who  had  known  all  the  time  that  war  was  a  bless- 
ing, seriously  thought  of  proposing  another  war  as  a  means  of 
increasing  national  prosperity.*  The  large  and  constant  in- 
vestment of  the  results  of  labor  and  economy  in  enterprises 
which  never  could  by  any  possibility  give  back  any  adequate 
return,  was,  as  every  body  saw,  the  next  best  thing  to  war ;  and 
on  the  advice  of  the  most  Christian  newspapers,  very  many  of 
the  best  people  made  haste  to  make  such  use  of  their  little 
savings ;  although,  as  agriculturists,  they  were  perfectly  well 
aware  that  to  plant  seed  wheat  or  corn  in  soils  where  it 
would  not  come  up,  or,  coming  up,  bear  no  fruit,  was  always 
very  bad  business,  and  did  not  encourage  the  sower  to  hire 
much  additional  labor  the  next  year. 

Another  idea  which  about  this  time  had  become  very  popu- 
lar on  the  island  was,  that  while  it  was  a  very  desirable  thing 
to  sell  as  much  as  possible  of  the  products  of  the  island  to  peo- 
ple in  other  countries,  it  was  not  desirable  to  buy  any  thing 
from  foreigners  in  return,  and  that  it  was  wise  to  put  all  pos- 
sible obstructions  in  the  way  of  any  ill-informed  persons  who 
desired  to  make  such  exchanges.  But  as  no  one  can  long  con- 
tinue to  buy  unless  he  proportionally  sells,  or  sell  unless  he 
proportionally  buys,  the  foreign  commerce  of  the  island  soon 
came  to  a  stand-still ;  and  what  also  notably  helped  to  this 
result  was,  that  the  necessity  of  insuring  all  exchanges  made 
through  the  medium  of  the  unstable  currency  of  the  island 

*  When  the  Japanese  embassy  visited  the  United  States,  in  1872,  they 
were  seriously  advised  to  create,  by  some  means,  a  national  debt  as  soon 
as  they  returned  home,  and  make  use  of  it  as  a  basis  for  the  creation  and 
issue  of  currency. 


74:  EOBIXSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

caused  all  the  island  products  to  cost  ivovafive  to  ten  ov  fifteen 
per  cent,  more  than  they  otherwise  would,  and  more  than  they 
would  cost  the  foreigners  to  buy  elsewhere."^     But  as  every 
industrious  community  (especially  if  it  calls  in  the  aid  of  the 
forces  of  nature  through  machinery)  produces  more  than  it 
consumes ;   and  as  the  islanders  were  both  industrious  and 
ingenious,  it  oddly  enough  happened  that  the  community  be- 
came sorely  troubled  by  an  accumulation  of  useful  things, 
which  the  manufacturers  would  not  part  with,  because  they 
were  unwilling  to  sell  at  a  loss,  and  which  the  foreigners 
would  not  buy  because  they  could  buy  cheaper  elsewhere, 
and  pay  in  their  own  products  for  what  they  bought.     Then 
the  manufactm-ers  stopped  producing,  and  next  the  laborers, 
by  lack  of  employment,  being  unable  to  buy  a  full  share  of 
the  existing  abundance,  in  turn  diminished  their  consumption ; 
so  that  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  though  the  island  would  get 
into  the  condition  of  those  unfortunate  people  who  die  of 
their  own  fatness. 

In  this  way  the  times  gradually  "  got  out  of  joint."  Grad- 
ually the  people  on  the  island  came  to  realize  that  much 
which  they  had  considered  as  wealth  was  not  wealth,  and  that 
many  influences,  before  little  regarded,  were  powerfully  act- 

*  Machiavelli,  in  his  "  Discourses  on  the  First  Ten  Books  of  Liry,"  book 
ii.,  chap,  iii.,  in  explaining  the  great  difference  in  the  relative  growth  of 
the  Roman  and  Spartan  republics,  relates  that  "  Lycurgus,  the  founder  of 
the  Spartan  republic,  believing  that  nothing  could  more  readily  destroy 
his  laws  than  the  admixture  of  new  inhabitants,  did  every  thing  possible 
to  deter  strangers  from  flocking  thither.  Besides  denying  them  intermar- 
riage, citizenship,  and  all  other  companionships  {conversationi)  that  bring 
men  together,  he  ordered  that  in  his  repuUic  only  leather  (non-exportable) 
money  should  ie  used,  so  as  to  indispose  all  strangers  to  bring  merchandise  into 
Sparta,  or  to  exercise  any  kind  of  art  or  industry  there,  so  that  the  city  never  could 
increase  in  population." 


AFTER   THE  WAR. 


75 


TrTirliiTtr1i=ffi 


I     I' I  \  M  I 

I 


IL'I 


NOT  I  CE. 
LONG  '^  BANKS     LOAN     TO 


THIS  SCHEME  ACCORDINGLY  FOUND  MANY  OPPONENTS,  "WHO  ALLEGED  THAT,  IF 
IT  WERE  CARRIED  OCT,  IT  WOULD  DEPRIVE  THEM  OF  MONEY,  AND  CONSE- 
QUENTLY  OF    INSTRUMENTALITIES    FOR    MAKING   THEIR    EXCHANGES. 

ing  to  make  and  keep  them  poor.  All  were  satisfied  that  the 
currency  which  they  were  using  was  one  prime  cause  of  their 
diflSculties,  but  in  precisely  what  manner  the  currency  exert- 
ed an  influence  few  agreed.  All  were  of  one  mind,  that  they 
ought  to  talk  about  it  continually ;  and  they  accordingly  did 


76  EOBimON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

SO,  those  who  knew  the  least  talking  the  most.  Some  thought 
that  the  honest  thing  to  do,  and  because  honest  the  best,  was 
for  the  Government  of  the  island  to  redeem  its  promises  to 
pay  on  demand  as  rapidly  as  possible ;  that  where  they  had 
borrowed  a  canoe  of  one  man,  cloth  of  another,  spears  of  a 
third,  or  money  of  a  fourth,  they  should  return  them,  and 
not  keep  promising  and  never  doing.  But  even  these  did  not 
agree  as  to  the  manner  of  thus  paying.  Some  thought  it  was 
best  to  return  the  canoes,  the  iron,  the  cloth,  and  the  money 
from  day  to  day  as  the  Government  gradually  acquired  them. 
Others  thought  that  a  better  way  would  be  to  accumulate 
each  separate  thing  in  a  separate  warehouse,  and  then  when 
the  warehouses  had,  after  some  years,  become  full,  open  the 
doors,  and  return  every  man  what  had  been  borrowed  of  him 
all  at  once.  But,  as  before  pointed  out,  the  Government  nev- 
er had,  or  could  have,  any  canoes,  cloth,  iron,  or  money,  except 
such  as  it  obtained  from  the  people  ;  and,  therefore,  payment 
on  the  part  of  the  Government  was  really  the  same  thing  as 
payment  on  the  part  of  the  people.  But  payment  of  debts  is 
something  to  which  many  people  are  constitutionally  opposed ; 
and  this  scheme  accordingly  found  many  opponents,  who  al- 
leged that,  if  it  were  carried  out,  it  would  deprive  them  of 
money,  and  consequently  of  instrumentalities  for  making  their 
exchanges ;  while  the  real  trouble  with  many  of  this  class  of 
people  was,  that  they  hadn't  any  thing  useful,  the  products 
of  their  own  industry,  to  exchange^  and  therefore  could  get 
no  money,  unless  they  went  to  work,  or,  what  was  preferable, 
acquired  it  from  somebody  without  consideration. 

Besides  the  persons  referred  to,  who  either  openly  or  by 
their  indecision  opposed  fiscal  reform,  there  were  various  oth- 
er classes  of  obstructives.  There  were  those,  for  example, 
who,  during  the  war,  were  always  friends  of  peace,  dressed 


AFTER   THE  WAR.  77 

in  broad-brimmed  hats  and  drab  coats,  and  were  at  any  time 
ready  to  compromise  with  the  cannibals,  on  condition  that  the 
latter  should  be  satisfied  with  roasting  and  eating  only  the 
old  men,  the  babies,  and  an  occasional  mother-in-law.  All 
such,  as  a  part  of  their  peace  policy,  opposed  the  original  issue 
and  circulation  of  the  bluebacks  as  something  arbitrary,  il- 
legal, and  unnecessary.  When,  however,  the  cannibals  were 
driven  away,  these  "  friends  of  peace  in  time  of  war  "  at  once 
changed  their  Quaker  garb ;  became  "  friends  of  war  in  time 
of  peace ;"  declared  earnestly  for  the  enlarged  issue  and  con- 
tinued use  of  the  bluebacks,  and,  as  a  pretext  for  so  doing, 
were  willing,  if  necessary,  to  have  another  war,  or,  at  least,  an 
annual  scare.  During  the  war,  these  friends  of  peace  were 
called  "  copper-heads ;"  and  after  the  war,  their  copper-head- 
ism,  although  disguised,  was  substantially  the  same  thing. 
For  it  was  apparent  that  opposition  to  the  issue  of  the  blue- 
backs,  as  manifested  by  the  advocates  of  peace  during  the 
war,  and  opposition  to  their  payment  and  withdrawal  after 
the  war,  were  only  different  manifestations  of  hostility  to  the 
Government  and  to  the  war  itself :  inasmuch  as  failure  on  the 
part  of  the  Government  to  observe  its  promises,  made  under 
such  circumstances  of  extreme  peril,  would  manifestly  put  it 
in  bad  repute,  and  prevent  it  from  ever  resorting  to  similar 
measures  in  like  emergencies.*     The  really  intelligent  and 

patriotic  men  of  the  island  at  once  saw  through  this  duplicity 

. — — — * ' 

*  Examination  will  show  that  the  United  States,  for  one-sixth  part  of 
their  existence  as  a  federated  nation,  have  been  in  a  state  of  war ;  and,  for 
the  future,  there  is  no  good  reason  for  supposing  that  the  country  is  to  be 
any  more  exempt  from  the  vicissitudes  of  nations  than  it  has  been  in 
the  past.  With  irredeemable  j)aper,  violation  of  plighted  faith,  gold  de- 
monetized and  banished,  in  what  condition  is  the  nation  for  maintaining  a 
great  national  struggle  ? 


78  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

and  repudiation,  advocated  under  pretense  of  extreme  solicitude 

for  the  wants  of  trade.     They  remembered  the  old  couplet : 

"  When  the  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  monk  tvould  be ; 
When  the  devil  got  ivell,  the  devil  a  monk  was  he;"* 

and  thereafter  designated  the  opponents  of  paying  the  blue- 
backs,  as  inflated,  or  elongated,  copper-heads,  by  which  name 
they  were  ever  after  known  in  history. 

There  were  also  many  well-meaning  citizens,  who  sincerely 
desired  to  have  the  balloon  of  inflation  come  down,  but  stren- 
uously objected  to  have  this  result  effected  by  any  diminution 
of  the  volume  of  gas  contained  in  it.  All  the  first-cousins  of 
the  man  who  waited  for  the  river  to  run  by  before  crossing 
were  certain  the  balloon  would  come  down,  if  people  would 
only  be  patient,  keep  a  sharp  lookout,  and  wait.  But  to  this 
it  was  objected,  that  if  people  were  obliged  to  consume  a 
large  part  of  their  time  in  watching  the  balloon,  to  avoid 
having  their  heads  smashed  by  its  swayings  and  fluctuations, 
there  would  ultimately  be  a  scarcity  of  victuals  and  drink; 
and  that,  rendered  desperate  with  watching,  and  want  of  em- 
ployment, food,  and  clothing,  those  interested  would  finally 
insist  on  pulling  open  the  valves,  and  letting  the  whole  vol- 
ume of  gas  escape  at  once.  Some  proposed  to  imitate  the 
example  of  "  Peter  the  Headstrong "  in  fighting  the  Yankees, 
and  bring  down  the  balloon  by  proclamation ;  while  others 
professed  to  have  great  faith  in  family  prayer.  Eminent  pa- 
triotic constitutional  lawyers  maintained  that  the  military  ne- 
cessity that  authorized  and  created  the  bliiebacks  must  neces- 
sarily limit  their  duration  solely  to  the  period  of  their  military 

*  In  a  case  often  overlooked  (Bank  vs.  Supervisors,  7  "Wallace),  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court  decided  that  ^'United  States  notes  are  engagements  to  pay 
dollars;  and  the  dollars  intended  are  coined  dollars  of  the  United  States.^'  Re- 
fusal to  pay  such  notes  in  coin  is  clearly,  therefore,  repudiation. 


AFTER   THE  WAR.  79 

necessity ;  and  that  their  continued  re-issue  and  use  after  the 
repulse  of  the  cannibals  was  but  a  prolongation  of  the  war — 
not  against  the  enemy,  but  against  their  own  people.  The 
astute  elongated  copper-head  lawyers  held,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  an  instrument  of  military  necessity,  once  created,  remains 
such  an  instrumentality  for  continued  use  for  all  time ;  and, 
therefore,  that  a  bullet  or  shell,  once  lawfully  employed  for 
effecting  destruction  in  time  of  war,  could  legitimately  be  re- 
issued or  reshot  in  time  of  peace,  without  matter  as  to  whom 
it  might  hit  or  what  property  it  might  destroy ;  and  that,  in 
fact,  to  go  on  reloading  and  retiring  these  instruments,  and 
thereby  killing  and  destroying,  were  not  crimes,  but  high  acts 
of  patriotism.  This  theory,  however,  alarmed  some  timid 
people,  who  said  that  one  shell  or  one  bullet  thus  re-used  in- 
definitely might  destroy  all  the  property,  or  kill  all  the  people 
on  the  island ;  and  they  rather  regretted,  in  view  of  such  a 
construction,  that  they  did  not  at  once  succumb  to  the  can- 
nibals, whose  appetites,  in  time,  might  have  become  cloyed,  or 
whose  diet  might  have  been  changed  through  indigestion  or 
moral  suasion. 

In  the  period  of  doubt  and  perplexity  which  thus  came  to 
the  community,  those  fond  of  precedents  carefully  searched 
the  old  chronicles  and  records  of  other  nations  for  lessons  of 
experience ;  and,  among  various  things  which  profited  them 
greatly,  they  found,  among  the  chronicles  of  the  learned  Span- 
ish historian,  Fray  Antonio  Agapida,  the  following  account  of 
what  the  veteran  soldier,  Don  Inigo  Lopez  de  Mendoza,  Count 
de  Tendilla,  did,  when,  besieged  by  the  Moors  in  the  town  of 
Alliama,  he  had  also  serious  financial  difficulties  to  contend 
with : 

"It  happened,"  says  Agapida,  "that  this  Catholic  cavalier, 
at  one  time,  was  destitute  of  gold  and  silver  wherewith  to  pay 


80  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

the  wages  of  his  troops ;  and  the  soldiers  murmured  greatly, 
seeing  that  they  had  not  the  means  of  purchasing  necessities 
from  the  people  of  the  town.  In  this  dilemma,  what  does 
this  most  sagacious  commander?  He  takes  me  a  number  of 
little  morsels  of  paper,  on  the  which  he  inscribes  various  sums, 
large  and  small,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  case,  and  signs 
me  them  with  his  own  hand  and  name.  These  did  he  give  to 
the  soldiery,  in  earnest  of  their  pay.  '  How !'  you  will  say, '  are 
soldiers  to  be  paid  with  scraps  of  paper?'  'Even  so,'  I  an- 
swer, 'and  well  paid,  too,  as  I  will  presently  make  manifest; 
for  the  good  count  issued  a  proclamation  ordering  the  inhab- 
itants of  Alhaina  to  take  these  morsels  of  paper  for  the  full 
amount  thereon  inscribed,  promising  to  redeem  them  at  a  fut- 
ure time  with  silver  and  gold,  and  threatening  severe  punish- 
ment to  all  who  should  refuse.  The  people,  having  full  confi- 
dence in  his  word,  and  trusting  that  he  would  be  as  willing  to 
perform  the  one  promise  as  he  certainly  was  able  to  perform 
the  other,  took  these  curious  morsels  of  paper  without  hesita- 
tion or  demur.  Thus,  by  a  subtile  and  most  miraculous  kind 
of  alchemy,  did  this  Catholic  cavalier  turn  worthless  paper 
into  precious  gold,  and  make  his  late  imj)overished  garrison 
abound  in  money !' 

"It  is  but  just  to  add,"  continues  the  historian,  "that  the 
Count  de  Teudilla  redeemed  his  promises,  like  a  loyal  knight ; 
and  this  miracle,  as  it  appeared  in  the  eyes  of  Agapida,  is  the 
first  instance  on  record  of  paper  money."* 

It  may  be  also  remarked  that  the  island  antiquarians  did  not 
find  any  chronicle  of  any  other  soldier  who  imitated  Count  de 
Tendilla  in  issuing  "little  morsels  of  paper"  to  serve  as  mon- 
ey, and  subsequently  did  not  imitate  him  in  promptly  redeem- 

*  Irving's  "  Conq^uest  of  Granada." 


"an  instrument  of  military  necessity,  once  created,  remains  such  an 
instrumentality  for  continued  use  for  all  time  ;   no  matter  who 


IT   MAY    HIT,    OR  WHAT    PROPERTY    IT    MAY   DESTROY 


T» 


6 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  83 

ing  his  promises,  who  found  it  easy  to  obtain  again  the  confi- 
dence of  the  soldiers  or  the  people  when  he  again  got  into 
similar  difiiculties.* 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE   NEW   MILLENNIUM. 

At  last  there  arose  a  sect  of  philosophers  (calling  them- 
selves Friends  of  Humanity)  who  felt  confident  of  settling  all 
difiiculties,  and  who  also  aspired  to  the  government  of  the 
island. 

Their  chief  had  the  reputation  of  being  an  ogre.  He  had 
served  in  the  war  against  the  cannibals,  looked  exceedingly 
fierce,  and  therefore  was  accounted  brave ;  he  talked  loud 
and  with  great  assurance,  and  therefore  he  was  accounted 
wise;  he  had  acquired  great  riches  without  ever  doing  any 
thing  useful,  and  therefore  he  was  accounted  skilled  in  busi- 
ness. 

His  principal  associates  and  counselors  w^ere  two.  The 
first  was  a  great  orator,  who  had  spent  most  of  his  life  as  a 
missionary  among  an  uneducated  people  who  never  had  any 
property,  and,  of  course,  made  no  exchanges ;  and  in  this  most 
excellent  and  practical  school  had  learned  all  that  could  be 
acquired  on  this  complicated  subject.  The  second  was  a  great 
athlete,  who  had  performed  for  many  years  in  the  national  cir- 

*  In  every  cabinet  of  rare  coins  in  Europe  there  will  be  found  specimens 
of  what  are  known  as  "  oisidional "  coins,  or  coins  struck  in  besieged  places 
to  supply  the  place  of  coined  money.  These  coins  appear,  in  all  instances, 
to  have  been  regarded  as  obligations  sacred  in  their  nature,  and  their  re- 
pudiation a  high  crime  against  morality  and  patriotism. 


84  EOBIXSOy  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

cus,  and  had  acquired  great  reputation  by  carrying  weighty 
packages  on  both  shouldei-s, labeled  "domestic  industry,"  but 
which  in  reality  contained  only  pig-iron.  About  these  two 
"  every  one  that  was  in  distress,  every  one  that  was  in  debt, 
and  every  one  that  was  discontented  gathered  themselves,"  so 
that  they  soon  had  a  large  body  of  disciples. 

The  first  thing  they  did  was  to  abuse  poor  old  Robinson 
Crusoe,  because  he  had  advised  his  people,  in  his  life-time, 
to  make  their  money  of  gold  (which  can  be  only  produced  by 
labor,  and  not  by  hocus-pocus) ;  and  their  currency  of  some- 
thing that  represented  gold,  and  this,  too,  when  he  must  have 
known  that  gold  "  was  the  machinery  and  relic  of  old  despot- 
isms ;"*  and  they  made  no  account  whatever  of  the  fact  that 
he  was  the  father  of  his  country  and  lived  in  a  cave.  Xext 
they  declared  that  all  the  opinions  heretofore  accepted  on 
this  subject  by  the  rest  of  mankind  were  fallacious;  that 
nature  had  done  its  best  to  make  the  island  an  isolated  com- 
munity ;  that  legislation  had  pretty  effectually  supplemented 
whatever  in  this  respect  nature  had  left  deficient ;  and,  there- 
fore, that  the  wants  of  the  island,  in  respect  to  money,  cur- 
rency, and  every  thing  else,  were  so  exceptional  and  peculiar 
that  the  accumulated  experience  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
could  not  be  to  them  either  applicable  or  instructive.  All 
agreed  that  the  pernicious  theory  taught  by  Eobinson  Crusoe, 
Friday,  and  other  men  of  by-gone  days  and  other  countries — 
that  money,  to  be  good,  ought  to  be  a  universally  desirable 
commodity,  and  the  equivalent  of  that  for  which  it  is  ex- 
changed—  was  the  real  source  of  all  financial  trouble;  for 
was  it  not  clear,  that,  if  such  were  the  case,  those  only  could 
ever  have  money  who,  like  the  bloated  wheat -holders,  pig- 

*  Speech  of  General  B.  F.  Butler,  United  States  House  of  Kepresenta- 
tives. 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM. 


85 


THE   DOCTORS   PRESCRIBE   CONTINUED    LOW  (fISCAl)  DIET. 


holders,  gattle- holders,  house  -  holders,  or  bond -holders,  had 
through  labor  previously  come  into  possession  of  some  desira- 
ble things,  which  they  could  give  in  exchange  as  an  equivalent 
for  money  ?  while  the  true  end  of  all  financial  reform,  and  the 
key  to  the  terrible  problem  of  poverty,  was  obviously  to  devise 
and  bring  into  use  that  kind  of  money  which  those  who  had 


86  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

no  wheat,  pigs,  cattle,  houses,  bonds,  or  other  commodities, 
and  were  not  able  or  disposed  to  acquire  any  through  an  ex- 
change of  their  services,  could  have  without  difficulty,  and  in 
abundance.  "We  mean,  therefore,"  said  the  orator -philoso- 
pher, speaking  for  himself  and  his  colleague  Friends  of  Hu- 
manity, "  to  have  more  democracy  and  less  aristocracy  in  the 
money  market;  more  money  in  every  body's  reach,  and  less 
for  the  petted  few."*  In  short,  the  patient  having  become 
very  sick  and  attenuated  by  reason  of  the  low  (fiscal)  diet  upon 
which  he  had  been  fed,  the  doctors  now  proposed  to  resusci- 
tate him  by  administering  a  still  thinner  gruel. 

All  also  agreed  that  the  word  "  money "  was  a  bad  name, 
and  that  the  public  would  obtain  a  much  clearer  idea  of  the 
great  problems  at  issue  if  more  intelligible  and  scientific  terms 
embodying  definitions  were  used.  One  philosopher  accord- 
ingly proposed  that,  as  they  intended  to  sprout  it  everywhere, 
they  should  go  back  to  the  Biblical  designation,  and  call  it  the 
"  root,"  at  the  same  time  remarking  that  "  the  Lord  showed 
what  he  thought  of  money  by  the  kind  of  people  he  gave  it 
to."  Another  proposed  to  call  it  "  the  instrument  of  associa- 
tion "  (Carey) ;  a  tliird,  the  "  sign  of  transmission,  of  which 
the  material  shall  be  of  native  growth  "  (John  Law,  1705) ;  a 
fourth,  "  a  sense  of  value  as  compared  with  commodities " 
("  British  Tracts  on  Money,"  1795-1810) ;  a  fifth, "  a  standard 
neither  gold  nor  silver,  but  something  set  up  in  the  imagina- 
tion to  be  regulated  by  public  opinion  "  (ibid.). 

As  to  what  money,  under  the  reform  system,  was,  or  should 
be,  was  also  a  question  in  respect  to  which  there  was  not  at 
first  an  entire  agreement.  One  idea  which  found  some  favor, 
was,  that  money  ought  to  be  only  a  token,  representative  of 

*  Letter  of  Wandell  Phillips  to  the  New  York  Legal-tender  Club,  1875. 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  87 

services  rendered  at  some  indefinite  time  or  place  (possibly 
forgotten  or  disputed  by  its  recipient),  and  "for  which  the 
holder  has  not  received  the  equivalent  to  which  he  is  inher- 
ently entitled  under  the  system  of  division  of  labor,"*  The 
best  money,  therefore,  according  to  the  philosophers  of  this 
idea,  was  an  evidence  that  some  one  person  owed  some  other 
person ;  and,  consequently,  the  more  debt,  the  more  money ; 
and  the  more  money,  the  more  wealth,  unless  it  is  to  be  sup- 
posed (as  is  not  reasonable)  that  this  sort  of  money  was  not  to 
have  the  first  attribute  of  all  other  money — namely,  purchas- 
ing power. 

Moreover,  although  the  philosophers  did  not  exactly  say  so, 
the  inference  was  also  legitimate,  that  in  a  community  using 
merely  "  token  "  or  "  remembrance  "  money,  the  surest  way  to 
get  rich  would  be  to  get  in  debt,  and  the  best  way  of  carrying 
on  an  enlightened  system  of  trade  and  commerce,  to  exchange 
commodities,  the  results  of  time  and  labor,  for  evidences  of 
debt  without  interest.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  these  teach- 
ings and  inferences  tended  to  greatly  strengthen  the  people  on 
the  island  in  the  opinion  they  before  entertained,  that  the  cur- 
rency they  already  had — namely,  evidences  of  destruction — 
was  the  "  best  currency  the  world  ever  saw." 

The  three  leaders  among  the  philosophers  were  not,  however, 
men  who  were  going  to  be  contented  with  any  half-way  meas- 
ures. Had  they  not  put  their  hands  to  the  plow  of  reform  ? 
and  were  they,  after  so  doing,  to  allow  the  plow  to  stick  fast 
in  the  furrow  ?  They  accordingly  appealed  first  to  authority, 
and  then  to  untutored  reason. 

The  following  are  some  of  the  authorities  to  which  great 
weight  was  given : 

*  Charles  Moran,  New  York  Commercial  Bulletin,  October  5th,  1875. 


1 


88  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

"Commerce  and  population,  wWcli  are  the  riches  and  power  of  the 
state,  depend  on  the  quantity  and  management  of  money. — John  Law, 
Memoir  to  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  1705, 

"  Does,  or  does  not,  our  duty  to  ourselves  and  the  world  at  large  de- 
mand that  we  maintain  permanently  a  non-exportable  circulation  ?  Such 
is  the  question  which  now  agitates  the  nation,  and  must  at  no  distant  day 
absorb  all  others.  The  affirmative  of  this  question  is  also  in  perfect  har- 
mony with  the  practice  and  experience  of  leading  nations,  and  in  harmony 
with  the  teachings  of  sound  economic  science." — Letter  of  Henry  C.  Carey  to 
Congressman  Moses  TV.  Field,  of  Detroit,  September,  1875.  Consult  also  Gov- 
ernor William  Kieft, "  On  the  Use  of  "Wampum  Money  in  New  Amsterdam  " 
(large  folio,  scarce  and  rare),  1659. 

"  Long  familiarity  with  the  practice  of  giving  security  for  loans,  and  of 
paying  them  back  at  a  fixed  date,  has  blinded  us  to  the  national  advan- 
tages of  loans  without  security  and  payable  at  any  date." — Kaul  Marx, 
Secretaire,  Organisation  de  V Internationale. 

But  the  thing  which  the  philosophers  relied  on  more  than 
any  thing  else  to  sustain  their  views  before  the  people  was  a 
judicial  decision  recently  made  in  a  neighboring  country,  by 
its  highest  court,  before  whom  the  question  as  to  what  consti- 
tuted money  was  officially  brought  for  determination.  This 
decision,  expressed  in  the  very  peculiar  language  of  the  coun- 
try, was  as  follows :  "  What  we  do  assert  is,  that  Congress  has 
power  to  enact  that  the  Government  promises  to  pay  money 
shall  be,  for  the  time  being,  equivalent  in  value  to  the  repre- 
sentative of  value  determined  by  the  coinage  acts,  or  to  mul- 
tiples thereof."  All  of  which,  translated  into  the  language  of 
the  island,  meant  that  Government  has  the  power  to  make  a 
promise  to  pay,  containing  an  acknowledgment  in  itself  that 
the  promise  has  not  been  paid,  a  full  satisfaction  that  the 
promise  has  been  paid.  That  this  decision,  furthermore,  cov- 
ered no  new  points  of  law,  was  indirectly  conceded  by  the 
learned  judges,  inasmuch  as,  in  giving  their  opinions,  they 
cited,  as  precedents  worthy  of  being  ever  remembered,  the  de- 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  89 

cisions  of  that  eminent  old-time  jurist,  Cade  (Jack),  who  or- 
dained that  "seven  half-penny  loaves  should  be  sold  for  a  pen- 
ny;" and  that  "the  three-hooped  pot  shall  have  ten  hoops." 
The  same  court  also  strengthened  its  position  by  saying  that 
"it  is  hardly  correct  to  speak  of  a  standard  of  value.  The 
Constitution  does  not  speak  of  it.  Yalue  is  an  ideal  thing. 
The  coinage  acts  fix  its  unit  as  a  dollar ;  but  the  gold  and 
silver  thing  we  call  a  dollar  is  in  no  sense  the  standard  of  a 
dollar.  It  is  a  representative  of  it.  There  might  never  have 
been  a  piece  of  money  of  the  denomination  of  a  dollar."* 

[Note. — This  last  remark  of  the  learned  court  embodied  a 
great  discovery ;  for  how  can  there  be  a  representative  with- 
out something  to  represent  ?  In  the  case  of  Peter  Schlemihl, 
there  was  a  man  without  a  shadow ;  but  here  we  have  a  shad- 
ow without  any  substance  to  make  it.  A  gold  dollar  is  not  a 
specific  and  mechanically  formed  coin ;  but  25.8  grains  of 
standard  gold  is  a  dollar.  Did  the  court  mean  that  these 
grains  of  gold  may  never  have  existed,  and  yet  have  represent- 
atives ? — Author.'] 

The  moment  this  decision  was  received,  all  the  philoso[)hers 
got  down  their  dictionaries,  and  searched  for  the  meaning  of 
the  word  "  ideaV  As  was  anticipated,  its  definition  was  found 
to  be  "visionary;"  "existing  in  fancy  or  imagination  only" 
(Webster) ;  and  from  this  time  forth  there  was  no  longer  any 
doubt  in  the  minds  of  the  reformers  of  the  truth  and  strength 
of  the  position  they  occupied.  For,  to  descend  to  reasoning, 
were  not  two  intricate  questions  definitely  settled  by  the  high- 
est of  human  tribunals?  1st.  That  the  representative  of  a 
thing  may  be  (and  if  those  in  authority  say  so,  shall  be)  equiv- 

*  Opiuiou  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  by  Justice  Strong. — 
Wallace,  12,  p.  553. 


90  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONET. 

alent  to  the  thing  itself.  2d.  That  vahie  is  an  ideal  thing,  and 
therefore  imagination,  which  creates  all  ideal  things,  can  cre- 
ate value. 

It  followed,  of  course,  that  to  have  and  enjoy  any  thing 
and  every  thing,  it  is  only  necessary  to  create  and  use  its 
symbol  or  representative ;  and  to  pay  for  value  received,  it 
is  only  necessary  to  imagine  a  corresponding  and  equivalent 
value,  and  pass  it  over  in  exchange  and  settlement.  On  these 
conclusions  of  law  and  reason,  then,  it  was  decided  by  the  three 
leaders  of  the  philosophers  and  their  friends,  who  had  control 
of  the  Government,  that  the  future  money  of  the  state  should 
be  based.  The  former  inscription  on  the  currency  in  use, 
"  promise  to  pay,"  they  were  clear,  was  entirely  unnecessary ; 
for  why  promise  money  when  the  store  on  hand  of  money 
was  to  be  made  practically  unlimited,  or,  at  least,  always  equal 
to  the  wants  of  every  body  who  desired  to  have  it,  wheth- 
er he  traded  or  not?  Mathematical  calculations  were  also 
made  by  a  scientist,  which  proved  that  the  amount  of  labor 
which  would  be  actually  saved  to  the  community,  and  made 
available  for  other  purposes,  by  using  something  as  money 
which  cost  little  or  no  labor  to  produce,  in  place  of  gold  or 
commodities  which  represented  much  labor,  would  be  so  great 
as  to  require  the  immediate  enactment  of  a  law  prohibiting 
any  one  from  working  over  six  hours  per  day,  in  order  to 
guard  against  the  evil  of  too  great  abundance.  The  same 
scientist  had  previously  been  so  carried  away  by  his  demon- 
strations of  the  utility  of  a  new  stove  which  saved  half  the 
fuel,  that  he  had  recommended  the  purchase  of  two  stoves  in 
order  to  save  the  whole. 

With  few  exceptions,  to  be  hereafter  noted,  the  whole  pop- 
ulation of  the  island  were  jubilant,  and  proceeded  as  rapidly 
as  circumstances  would  permit  to  adjust  all  their  commercial 


1 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  91 

transactions  to  the  new  basis.  But  joy  at  the  prospect  of  the 
coming  millennium  did  not  extinguish  feelings  of  gratitude 
in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  they  resolved  to  send  ample 
testimonials  to  all,  in  foreign  lands,  to  whom  they  had  been 
indebted  for  wisdom. 

To  each  of  the  judges  who  had  so  intelligently  defined 
value  they  accordingly  voted  an  ideal  castle  and  estate,  pos- 
session of  the  same  conferring  nobility  upon  their  owner,  with 
the  title  of  '•'•Baron  Ideality^''  to  which,  by  special  patent,  the 
recipient  was  authorized  to  use  (if  he  pleased)  the  prefix  of 
"  damnP 

To  the  most  notable  advocate,  in  foreign  lands,  of  the  idea 
of  non-exportable  money  a  gift  of  one  million  of  "  instruments 
of  association,"  represented  by  ideal  currency,  was  voted.  But 
as  this  currency,  both  by  law  and  the  fitness  of  things,  could 
not  be  exported  from  the  island,  it  became  impossible  to  pay 
this  gift,  and  in  its  place  a  letter  was  written  explaining  the 
circumstances,  and  requesting  that  the  resolution  to  pay  might 
be  accepted  as  a  "  sign  of  transmission." 

To  the  eminent  financier  who  defined  money,  "  as  a  sense 
of  value  in  reference  to  currency  as  compared  with  commod- 
ities," there  was  sent  a  plaster  image  of  the  '•'•'What  Is  Itf 
while  to  his  colleague,  who  had  given  the  opinion  that  "  the 
less  costly  the  material  out  of  which  money  was  made,  the 
better  for  the  community  which  uses  it,"  was  sent  a  large 
box,  containing  contributions  of  the  most  worthless  things 
every  body  could  think  of,  with  a  polite  note  requesting  the 
recipient  to  make  his  choice  out  of  the  collection  of  what 
seemed  to  him  best  adapted  as  a  token,  and  forward  a  detailed 
report  of  his  experience  in  attempting  to  use  it  as  a  represent- 
ative of  unrequited  service. 

Pending  the  slow  preparations  of  the  Government  of  the  isl- 


92 


ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONET. 


THE    ARAB   AND    THE    CA3IEL. 

Au  Arab  asked  the  loaded  camel  whether  he  preferred  to  go  up  or  down  hill.    "  Pray, 
master,"  said  the  camel,  dryly,  "  is  the  straight  way  across  the  plain  shut  up?"— ^sop. 


and  to  provide  the  requisite  laws  for  the  issue  and  use  of  the 
new  money,  various  enlightened  individuals  attempted  to  an- 
ticipate official  legislative  action  by  putting  into  practical  op- 
eration, on  their  own  account,  the  principles  involved  in  the 
new  fiscal  system.  The  first  of  these  who  thus  acted  was  a  sec- 
retary for  the  interior  part  of  the  island,  whose  chief  business 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  93 

was  to  supply  the  heathen — for  whom,  it  will  be  remembered, 
Robinson  Crusoe  took  up  contributions — with  beef.  There 
had  been  a  suspicion  for  some  time  past  hanging  over  this  of- 
ficial that  the  heathen  did  not  get  all  the  beef  that  they  were 
entitled  to ;  but  the  suspicion  probably  had  no  further  founda- 
tion than  the  inability  of  the  heathen  to  make  the  sense  of 
completion  harmonize  with  the  sign  of  transmission.  To  sat- 
isfy the  heathen,  and  at  the  same  time  effectually  clear  up  his 
character,  the  official  in  question  now  hastened  to  have  pre- 
pared a  large  number  of  pictures  of  fine,  fat  cattle,  which  he 
dispatched  by  a  Quaker  to  the  heathen,  with  a  request  that 
they  would  kill  and  eat,  and  be  satisfied,  adding  in  a  post- 
script that  they  would  do  well  to  begin  to  learn  economy  by 
saving  the  skins.  As  the  Quaker  never  came  back,  it  was 
deemed  reasonably  certain  that,  at  least,  the  first  part  of  the 
request  had  been  complied  with. 

The  managers  of  the  Island  Provident  Society  also  prompt- 
ly determined  to  develop  and  apply  the  ideal  system  in  their 
sphere  of  usefulness  to  the  full  extent  that  circumstances  per- 
mitted. Thus  a  large  part  of  the  business  of  this  old  and  re- 
spected society  was  the  distribution  of  clothing  to  the  desti- 
tute ;  and,  as  is  always  the  case  when  times  are  hard,  the  ex- 
tent of  the  demands  made  upon  it  for  aid  tended  to  exceed 
the  means  of  supply  contributed  by  the  charitable.  The  man- 
agers, however,  knew  that  it  never  would  answer  in  using  the 
ideal  system  to  subserve  the  work  of  charity,  to  put  the  local- 
ly needy  on  the  same  footing  as  the  heathen,  and  in  answer  to 
appeals  for  raiment  distribute  to  them  elaborate  pictures  of 
fine  clothing,  cut  from  the  fashion-plates ;  for  there  was  this 
essential  difference  in  the  situations,  that  the  needy  were  at 
their  doors,  while  the  heathen  were  a  great  way  off.  They, 
therefore,  hit  upon  this  happy  mean  :  they  employed  a  com- 


94  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

petent  artist,  with  a  full  supjDly  of  paints  and  brushes,  and 
when  any  destitute  person  applied  for  clothing,  they  painted 
upon  his  person  every  thing  he  desired  in  way  of  clothing  of 
the  finest  and  most  fashionable  patterns,  from  top-boots  to 
collars,  and  from  blue  swallow -tailed  coats  to  embroidered 
neck-ties,  with  jewelry  and  fancy  buttons  to  match.  Of  course, 
the  first  man  who  appeared  in  public  thus  arrayed  created  a 
profound  sensation.  But  the  idea  was  so  novel,  and  had  ob- 
viously so  many  advantages  over  the  old  way  of  clothing  one's 
self,  that  the  supremacy  of  the  ideal  over  the  real  was  at  once 
greatly  strengthened.  For  example — and  here  was  one  of  the 
greatest  merits  of  the  new  system — it  not  only  symbolized, 
but  practically  applied,  the  views  of  the  most  advanced  finan- 
cial philosophers ;  favored  (as  the  orator-philosopher  wished) 
"  more  democracy  and  less  aristocracy  in  the  clothes  market ;" 
and  encouraged  the  use  of  the  least  costly  material  out  of  which 
the  community  could  make  clothes ;  while  the  painted  cotton, 
silk,  wool,  and  leather  could  be  made  to  look  so  exactly  like 
the  real  articles,  that  it  was  only  when  the  attempt  was  made 
to  exchange  the  representative  for  the  real  that  the  differ- 
ence was  clearly  discernible.  Furthermore,  every  garment 
devised  in  accordance  with  the  new  system  was,  in  all  cases, 
a  perfect  fit.  The  plague  of  buttons  was  annihilated.  Every 
man  could  save  time  enough  in  dressing  and  undressing  to 
enrich  himself,  if  he  only  employed  his  economized  moments 
usefully.  Every  man  might,  without  embarrassment,  sleep  in 
his  clothes;  and  if  he  desired  to  change  his  monkey-jacket 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  times  in  a  year  for  an  overcoat, 
or  an  overcoat  for  a  monkey-jacket,  he  could  do  it  most  expe- 
ditiously, without  the  waste  of  any  raw  material  more  expen- 
sive than  paint ;  and  thus  the  system,  after  a  time,  by  a  happy 
thought,  got  the  name  of  the  '^  three-sixty  five  interchangea- 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  95 

bleP  Of  course,  this  answered  veiy  well  so  long  as  the  weath- 
er continued  mild  and  pleasant ;  but  later  in  the  season,  when 
it  became  cool  and  frosty,  experience  soon  showed  that  the 
warming  qualities  of  different  kinds  of  paint  were  not  essen- 
tially different ;  that  something  more  than  confidence  was  nec- 
essary to  keep  out  the  cold ;  and  that  the  temperature  and  cir- 
culation of  the  body  physical  remained  unaffected,  whether  a 
man  painted  himself  sky-blue  one  day  and  pea-green  the  next.* 
Again,  two  shrewd  fellows,  Peter  von  Scrapehem  and  Israel 
Double,  owned  each  a  farm  worth  ten  thousand  dollars.  Pe- 
ter sold  his  farm  for  its  full  value  to  Israel,  and  took  a  mort- 
gage for  the  total  purchase-money ;  and  Israel,  in  turn,  sold  his 
to  Peter,  and  took  a  mortgage  also  for  its  full  value.  By  so 
doing,  each  of  these  worthy  persons  clearly  doubled  the  prop- 
erty in  his  possession,  inasmuch  as  while  each  had  at  the  out- 
set only  ten  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  real  estate,  each  now 
had  ten  thousand  of  real  estate  and  ten  thousand  of  personal 
property ;  or  an  aggregate  of  forty  thousand  between  them,  in 
the  place  of  twenty  thousand  originally.  This  method  of  mul- 
tiplying property  by  multiplying  titles  was  so  easy,  and  the 
result  so  apparent,  that  the  example  was  very  generally  fol- 
lowed ;  and  when  the  census  came  to  be  taken,  a  few  moiiths 
afterward,  all  were  amazed  at  the  enormous  increase  of  wealth 
that  had  followed  the  discovery  and  simple  recognition  of  the 
true  nature  and  value  of  titles. 

*  The  Indians  on  the  Atrato  River  (Central  America),  when  first  visited 
by  one  of  the  recent  inter-ocean-canal  exploring  parties,  were  found  to  be 
unaccustomed  to  the  use  of  much,  if  any,  clothing ;  but  after  a  little  inter- 
course "with  civilized  man,  some  of  the  more  intelligent  of  the  natives  pre- 
sented themselves  with  their  bodies  painted  in  close  imitation  of  clothes, 
which  they  claimed  to  be  superior  in  every  respect  to  the  genuine  articles 
worn  by  their  visitors. 


96  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

Up  to  this  time  the  supply  of  milk  on  the  island  had  been 
mainly  controlled  by  a  single  corporation,  which,  under  the 
name  of  the  "  Lacteal  Fluid  Association,"  owned  all  the  cows, 
and,  for  the  purpose  of  facilitating  supply,  had  long  been  in 
the  habit  of  issuing  tickets,  each  good  for  a  pint  or  a  quart 
of  milk,  and  disposing  of  milk  to  those  only  who  had  tickets. 
These  tickets  revolved  perfectly  in  the  closed  circle  of  ex- 
change between  the  milk-men  and  their  customers,  satisfying 
all  demands,  and  being  accepted  as  the  same  thing  as  milk; 
for  the  more  tickets,  the  more  milk ;  and  no  tickets,  no  milk. 

During  the  war  the  cannibals,  in  lack  of  any  other  meat, 
had  eaten  a  large  number  of  the  cows  belonging  to  the  "  Lac- 
teal Association."  Many  had  been  also  taken  by  the  Govern- 
ment for  the  soldiers;  so  that  after  the  war  was  over  there 
were  really  no  more  cows  than  the  island  absolutely  needed. 
All  at  once,  the  "  foot-and-mouth  disease  "  invaded  the  island, 
and,  attacking  every  cow  belonging  to  the  association,  render- 
ed her  unable  to  give  milk.  Then  arose  such  a  piteous  cry 
from  every  household  where  there  were  babies  as  carried  a 
pang  to  the  stoutest  hearts.  There  was  no  need  of  any  con- 
certed action,  for  the  people  assembled  spontaneously  and  de- 
manded action.  An  immense  public  meeting  was  at  once  or- 
ganized. A  highly  popular  and  humane  man,  a  special  friend 
of  children,  familiarly  known  as  Uncle  Dick,  was  called  to 
the  chair.  He  was  supported  by  a  long  list  of  leading  citizens 
as  vice-presidents  and  secretaries,  none  of  whom,  however,  had 
had  any  practical  acquaintance  with  milk  since  their  child- 
hood, except  in  the  form  of  punch.  The  chairman  made  an 
eloquent  speech.  He  did  not  know  whether  he  was  most  agi- 
tated by  pity  or  indignation — pity  for  the  poor  babies,  whose 
sufferings  had  become  intolerable ;  indignation  at  the  cruelty 
of  the  chartered  monopolists,  who  had  wantonly  refused  to  is- 


^..^^  y 


IS 

NOT 

RAG 

Baby' 


MILIC-TICKETS    FOB   BABIES,    IN    PLACE    OF    MILK. 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  99 

sue  more  tickets  at  the  very  time  when  the  demand  for  milk 
was  most  imperative.  The  assembly  was  of  one  mind  with 
the  chairman,  and  nnanimously  resolved  that  the  Lacteal  As- 
sociation sliould  immediately  increase  their  snpply  of  tickets, 
and  that,  in  default  thereof,  their  charter  should  be  altered 
and  amended.  Unable  to  resist  the  storm  of  popular  indigna- 
tion, the  association  at  once  complied,  and  every  patriotic  cit- 
izen went  home  to  the  bosom  of  his  afflicted  family,  carrying 
an  abundant  supply  of  milk-tickets,  and  feeling  conscious  that 
for  once  at  least  he  had  risen  to  the  level  of  the  occasion. 

That  night  the  babies  were  all  supplied  with  milk-tickets  in 
the  place  of  milk.  Milk-tickets  hot,  milk-tickets  cold,  milk- 
tickets  sweetened,  milk -tickets  plain,  milk -tickets  with  tlieir 
backs  printed  green,  and  interchangeable  with  milk -tickets 
drawing  cream  skimmed  from  other  milk-tickets.  But,  strange 
to  say,  the  babies,  one  and  all,  with  that  same  sort  of  instinct- 
ive perversity  which  induces  children  of  a  larger  growth  to  re- 
fuse to  accept  shams  for  reality,  and  be  grateful  in  addition, 
refused  to  take  to  milk-tickets.  The  nproar  of  the  night  pre- 
ceding was  as  nothing  to  the  disturbances  of  the  night  follow- 
ing, and  morning  dawned  upon  an  unrefreshed  and  troubled 
population. 

As  soon  as  the  necessary  arrangements  could  be  made,  an- 
other meeting  assembled.  But  the  meeting  this  time  was 
composed  of  babies,  backed  by  their  mammas  and  nurses. 
There  was  no  theory  in  their  sentiments ;  and  though  young 
in  years,  one  and  all  felt  that  they  had  lived  long  enough  to 
know  what  their  fathers  apparently  did  not  know — namely, 
the  difference  between  milk  and  paper.  The  resolutions  voted 
were  brief,  but  to  the  point,  and  were,  substantially,  as  follows : 

First,  that  the  exigencies  of  the  times  demanded  more  milk, 
and  not  more  milk-tickets ;  second,  that  the  way  to  get  more 


100  BOBINSON  CBUSOE'S  MONEY. 

milk  was  to  have  more  cows ;  third,  that  the  way  to  get  more 
cows  was  to  go  to  work  and  raise  them,  or  raise  something 
else  equally  valuable,  and  then  with  this  something  else  buy 
cows ;  fourth,  that  there  are  certain  eternal  verities  against 
which  it  is  useless  for  either  babies  or  men  to  contend.  A 
committee  was  appointed  to  procure  a  mill  of  the  gods,  to 
grind  up  those  who  disbelieved  in  the  last  resolution,  and  the 
meeting  then  adjourned. 

This  was  the  first  indication  of  any  thing  like  popular  dis- 
sent from  the  views  of  the  Friends  of  Humanity.  Others, 
however,  soon  followed.  Yalue  having  been  declared  to  be  an 
ideal  thing,  and  ideal  measures  of  value  having  been  substi- 
tuted in  the  place  of  the  real  and  tangible  measures  formerly 
in  use,  it  had  been  deemed  proper  to  substitute  ideal  measures 
of  length,  weight,  and  capacity  in  the  place  of  the  foot-rules, 
yard-sticks,  pound-weights,  and  bushel-measures  formerly  era- 
ployed.  Shop-keepers,  plumbers,  charcoal  -  men,  gas  corpora- 
tors, and  all  others  who  had  any  thing  to  sell  accordingly  pro- 
vided themselves  with  slips  of  paper,  upon  which  were  print- 
ed, respectively,  "  This  is  a  foot,"  "  This  is  a  bushel,"  "  This  is 
a  pint,"  "  This  is  a  pound ;"  and  the  services  of  the  arithme- 
tic-man were  again  called  for,  to  prove  how  much  more  cloth, 
beer,  charcoal,  gas,  and  all  other  measurable  things  the  com- 
munity would  certainly  have  by  the  saving  of  labor  and  cap- 
ital contingent  on  the  avoidance  of  the  necessity  of  further 
manufacturing,  purchasing,  and  using  the  old  measures. 

But  the  new  system  did  not  work  smoothly.  There  was  no 
harmony  of  sentiment  between  buyers  and  sellers ;  and  what 
was  one  man's  ideal  of  what  he  should  give  or  receive  in  trade 
was  always  different  from  every  other  man's ;  and,  before  the 
community  were  well  aware  of  what  they  were  about,  they 
found  themselves  drifting  back  to  the  adoption  of  the  old  sys- 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  101 

tern  of  barter,  which  had  been  tried  and  abandoned  in  the 
early  days  of  the  island's  history.  Instead  of  one  price,  every 
one  who  had  commodities  or  services  to  sell  adopted  a  scale 
of  at  least  four  prices :  "  pay  price,"  "  money  price,"  "  pay  as 
money  price,"  and  a  "  trusting  price ;"  and  the  seller,  before 
fixing  his  price,  invariably  asked  his  customer  how  he  would 
pay.*  "  Pay  price "  was  barter ;  "  money  price "  was  pay- 
ment in  foreign  coin ;  "pay  as  money"  was  in  the  ideal  money 
of  the  island;  "trusting"  was  an  enhanced  price, according  to 
time.  Thus,  supposing  a  customer  wanted  a  knife,  its  price 
in  "  pay "  would  be  a  bushel  of  corn ;  in  "  money  price,"  a 
fifty-cent  gold  or  silver  coin ;  in  "  pay  as  money,"  sometimes 
as  much  as  he  could  bring  in  a  basket,  at  other  times  as  much 
as  he  could  bring  in  a  wheelbarrow ;  and  before  the  ultimate 
abandonment  of  the  use  of  ideal  money,  a  cart  had  to  be  em- 
ployed to  bring  the  money.  Trade  in  this  way  became  "  most 
intricate." 

News  also  came,  about  this  time,  that  the  heathen,  not  be- 
ing able  to  stay  their  stomachs  with  the  pictures  of  fat  cattle 
that  had  been  so  abundantly  sent  them,  and  considering  them- 
selves humbugged,  were  preparing  to  declare  war.  To  meet 
a  threatened  increased  expenditure  on  this  account,  the  Gov- 
ernment, therefore,  levied  new  taxes ;  and  as  the  valuation  of 
the  property  of  the  island,  under  the  influence  of  the  new  fis- 
cal system,  had,  as  before  stated,  enormously  increased,  it  was 
anticipated  that  a  small  rate  would  yield  a  large  revenue. 
But  as  soon  as  Scrapehem,  Double,  and  their  friends,  who  had 
been  multiplying  their  property  by  multiplying  titles,  found 

*  This  was  what  actually  happened  in  Connecticut  in  1704  and  there- 
abouts. See  "Madame  Knight's  Journal,"  quoted  in  Felt  and  Bronson's 
"  Histories  of  New  England  Currencies." 


102 


BOBINSOJSf  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


AN  INFLATION    LOOK    AHEAD. 


out  that  the  titles  were  to  be  valued  and  assessed  as  wealth, 
equally  with  the  property  which  the  titles  represented,  they 
hasted  to  swap  back,  and  cancel  their  mortgages ;  and  imme- 
diately half  the  reputed  wealth  of  the  island  disappeared. 

There  were  some  people,  it  will  be  remembered,  who  did 
not  share  in  the  general  jubilation  which  welcomed  the  dis- 
covery and  adoption  of  the  new  monetary  system.     These 


I 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  103 

were  the  stony -hearted  capitah'sts,  meaning  thereby  persons 
who  had  produced  by  industry  and  frugahty  more  than  they 
had  consumed,  and  had  lent  out  this  surplus  in  the  form  of 
ships,  houses,  horses  and  carts,  wheelbarrows,  coal,  iron,  and  the 
like,  on  condition  that  they  should  be  repaid  the  value  of  the 
several  articles  as  expressed  in  money,  with  a  portion  of  the 
profit  that  might  have  accrued  to  the  borrower  from  their  using. 
There  was  a  popular  feeling  that  all  these  lenders  were 
"  bloated,"  the  degrees  of  bloat  being,  of  course,  different  all 
the  way  from  the  man  who  owned  and  lent  a  ship  down  to 
the  man  who  owned  and  lent  a  cart,  or  their  equivalents  in 
money;  and  that  the  best  remedy  for  this  frightful  disease 
was  tapping,  and  tapping  by  tendering  in  payment  the  ideal 
money,  which  was  something  very  different  in  value  from  the 
money  understood  at  the  time  the  loans  were  effected.  Na- 
tives of  heathen  lands,  who  had  never  enjoyed  the  light  of  the 
Gospel,  called  this  robbing ;  but  many  on  the  island  who  had 
always  been  Christians  regarded  the  matter  with  indifference, 
and  treated  it  as  a  purely  sanitary  measure;  and  Christian 
ministers  who  never  preached  against  such  practices,  but  al- 
ways did  preach  against  the  sins  of  that  ancient  people,  the 
Jews,  wondered  at  the  low  tone  of  morality  that  seemed  to 
generally  characterize  society.  As  it  appears,  however,  from 
an  examination  of  the  ancient  records  of  the  island,  that  stren- 
uous exertions  were  made  about  this  time  to  interest  the  Gov- 
ernment and  the  people  in  the  momentous  question  of  the 
reading  of  the  Bible  in  the  public  schools,  and  thus  prevent 
public  attention  from  being  diverted  to  the  consideration  of 
any  such  unimportant  and  side  issues  as  the  nature  and  obli- 
gations of  promises,  it  may  be  that  the  low  tone  of  morality 
thus  referred  to  was  more  apparent  than  real;  no  province  de- 
volving upon  the  historian  being  more  difficult  than  that  of 


104  ROBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

attempting  to  reconcile,  after  a  long  lapse  of  years,  what  ap- 
pears to  be  a  series  of  contemporaneous  but  utterly  incongru- 
ous circumstances. 

But,  be  this  as  it  may,  all  who  had  loaned  valuable  com- 
modities desired  to  avoid  tapping,  and  consequently  hastened 
to  demand  repayment  before  the  ideal  money  could  be  exten- 
sively issued  and  put  into  circulation ;  and,  having  once  ob- 
tained payment,  were  very  cautious  how  they  lent  again.  All 
this  contributed,  in  the  language  of  the  day,  to  make  money 
very  tight ;  but  this  language  had,  to  a  great  extent,  no  mean- 
ing. The  only  money  that  was  tight  was  good  money,  and 
this  had  been  gone  so  long  that  the  younger  part  of  the  pop- 
ulation didn't  even  know  how  it  looked  ;  while  of  the  bad 
money  there  was  a  continually  increasing  quantity. 

Besides  good  money,  all  real  capital,  timber  for  building 
ships,  factories,  and  houses,  iron  for  the  construction  of  ma- 
chinery, cloth  for  clothes,  and  grain  for  food,  were  tight ;  not 
because  there  was  any  lack  of  all  these  useful  things,  but  be- 
cause the  owners  had  all  become  afraid  that  if  they  once  loan- 
ed or  parted  with  them  they  should  never  receive  back  an 
equivalent.  So  the  island,  instead  of  being  lifted  up  to  great 
prosperity,  was  plunged  into  the  depths  of  adversity.  There 
was  a  general  lack  of  confidence.  Societary  activity  was 
abated ;  production  was  arrested ;  and  men  desirous  of  being 
industrious  had  no  opportunity  of  following  any  industry. 

Gold  had  long  disappeared  from  circulation.  Although 
produced  in  large  quantities  on  the  island,  none  of  it  would 
stay  there,  but  flowed  off  to  foreign  countries  in  a  steady 
stream.  The  common  explanation  of  this  phenomenon  was, 
that  gold  had  become  the  cheapest  thing  the  island  produced, 
and  was,  therefore,  the  first  thing  exported.  But  a  majority  of 
those  who  said  and  heard  this  did  not  clearly  see  that  the  av- 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  105 

erage  purchasing  power  of  gold  the  world  over  had  not  varied 
in  any  degree ;  but  tliat  the  price  of  ahnost  every  other  thing 
produced  on  the  island  had  so  varied  and  relatively  increased, 
by  reason  of  domestic  fiscal  circumstances,  that  it  was  far  betr 
ter  for  the  foreigner  to  take  pay  in  gold  for  all  the  commodi- 
ties he  sold  to  the  island,  and  then,  with  this  gold,  purchase  in 
other  countries  the  very  things  which  the  island  specially  pro- 
duced and  wanted  to  sell.  As  already  intimated,  the  island- 
ers found  great  difficulty  in  understanding  this  little  arrange- 
ment; but  the  foreigners  understood  it  as  by  intuition,  and 
never  failed  to  act  upon  it.*  All  of  this  further  contributed 
to  turn  upside  down  and  inside  out  the  industries  of  the  isl- 
and ;  and  while  the  Friends  of  Humanity  continued  to  loudly 
proclaim  that  the  issue  of  more  money  would  cure  all  diffi- 
culties, the  people,  sorely  distressed,  and  ready  to  accept  relief 
from  any  quarter,  began  to  loudly  murmur,  in  turn,  at  what 
seemed  an  unnecessary  delay  in  making  the  issue ;  the  fact 
being,  that  although  public  opinion  was  nearly  unanimous  on 
the  subject,  the  regular  time  for  the  Congress  of  the  island  to 
meet  and  enact  the  laws  had  not  come  round. 

At  last,  the  long-expected  day  arrived,  and  Congress  assem- 
bled. All  the  special  and  immediate  Friends  of  "  More  Mon- 
ey," of  "  Ideal  Money,"  and  of  "  Humanity,"  were  members ; 
and  hardly  had  the  presiding  officer  taken  his  seat  before  fifty 
men  sprung  for  the  floor,  each  with  a  resolution  demanding 
immediate  fiscal  legislation.  The  first  resolution  adopted  was, 
that  the  Government  should  at  once  supply  all  the  money 

*  Whatever  may  have  been  the  immediate  effect  of  the  gold-discoveries 
in  California  and  Australia,  no  economist  of  repute  now  holds  to  the  opin- 
ion that  the  average  purchasing  power  of  gold  all  the  world  over  is  any- 
less  than  it  was  in  1849-'50;  or,  in  other  words,  that  any  increase  in  the 
quantity  of  gold  since  1849-50  has  resulted  in  any  present  depreciation. 


106 


EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


INCREASING    THE    VOLUME    OF  THE    CURRENCY. 

Capital.  "  By  dividing  this  one  dollar  it  becomes  two,  which  makes  more  money.    I  pay 
you  these  'two  dollars'  for  wages,  you  see." 
Labm:  "  But  when  I  go  to  buy  bread  I  find  them  only  worth  one ;  so  I  don't  see  it." 

which  the  wants  of  every  body,  and  every  trade  and  industry, 
might,  could,  would,  or  should  require ;  and  that  the  money 
thus  issued  should  be  a  legal  tender  for  the  payment  of  all 
debts,  past,  present,  and  prospective. 

The  next  important  question  was,  In  what  manner  should 


1| 


THE  NEW  MILLENNIUM.  107 

the  new  and  unlimited  supply  of  money  be  distributed  ?  All 
saw  at  once  that  it  would  never  do  to  commence  on  a  system 
of  giving  unlimited  something  for  unlimited  nothing ;  and  yet, 
if  this  was  not  done,  how  was  it  possible  for  the  wants  of 
those  who  had  nothing,  and  who,  of  course,  wanted  money  for 
this  reason  most  imperatively,  to  be  supplied  ?  Besides,  to 
create  an  unlimited  supply  of  the  new  money,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  have  a  good  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  slips 
of  paper  with  the  words,  "  This  is  a  dollar,"  "  This  is  ten  dol- 
lars," or  "  This  is — "  (some  other  amount),  properly  and  artist- 
ically printed  on  them ;  all  of  which,  in  turn,  would  require  a 
great  expenditure,  not  only  of  ink  and  paper,  but  also  of  time ; 
while  the  necessity  of  the  hour  was  for  immediate  relief,  espe- 
cially to  trade.  It  was  therefore  decided  to  leave  the  trouble- 
some question  of  equal  distribution  for  a  time  unsettled,  and 
endeavor  to  first  relieve  trade  by  doubling  the  volume  of  the 
currency.  And  in  order  to  do  this  at  once,  and  without  cost 
to  the  Government  for  engraving,  printing,  paper,  and  ink,  it 
was  therefore  enacted  that  every  one  having  legal-tender  cur- 
rency might  cut  or  divide  the  same  into  two  equal  halves  or 
pieces,  and  that  each  of  these  halves  or  pieces  so  resulting 
should  be  a  legal  tender  to  the  full  amount  that  the  whole  had 
previously  been.  At  first  thought,  this  proposition  to  exclude 
all  those  who  had  no  money  from  participation  in  the  new 
supply  seemed  most  palpably  unfair  and  unjust,  but  a  little 
consideration  satisfied  to  the  contrary ;  for  unless  it  was  pro- 
posed to  give  away  the  new  money,  it  was  obvious  that  those 
only  would  get  it  who  had  money,  and  that  the  proportion 
which  all  such  would,  obtain  would  be  in  proportion  to  what 
money  they  already  had.  It  was,  therefore,  deemed  wise  to 
anticipate  what  was  certain  to  be  the  ultimate  result,  and  dis- 
tribute it  in  the  manner  indicated. 


108  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

GETTING     SOBEK. 

It  was  expected  that  this  new  and  immense  volume  of  cur- 
rency, poured  at  once  on  to  the  wheels  of  trade,  would  imme- 
diately start  the  wheels.  But,  somehow,  it  didn't  seem  to  have 
that  effect  at  all.  The  wheels  not  only  would  not  revolve,  but 
the  friction  on  them  seemed  to  have  become  more  persistent 
and  chronic  than  ever.  In  fact,  the  doubling  the  volume  of 
the  currency,  instead  of  increasing  the  before  existing  instru- 
mentalities for  facilitating  exchanges,  had  really  diminished 
them ;  for  all  who  were  willing  to  exchange  commodities  for 
the  new  currency  either  doubled  the  price  of  their  commodi- 
ties, or  gave  only  half  the  quantity  for  what  they  regarded  as 
half  of  the  former  money ;  so  that  with  all  this  class  the  abun- 
dance of  currency  was  relatively  the  same  as  before.  But  the 
majority  who  had  any  thing  to  sell  would  not  accept  the  ideal 
money  in  exchange  at  all.  They  did  not  claim,  they  said,  to 
be  financiers,  or  philosophers,  or  even  special  friends  of  hu- 
manity ;  but  they  did  think  that  they  were  not  such  fools  that 
they  could  be  made  to  believe  that  the  half  of  a  thing  was 
equal  to  the  whole,  or  that  one  bushel  of  grain  could  be  con- 
verted into  two  by  putting  one  bushel  into  two  half-bushel 
measures. 

The  only  really  positive  effect  of  the  doubling  of  the  vol- 
ume of  the  currency  in  the  manner  authorized  by  law  was, 
therefore,  to  scale  all  debts  to  the  extent  of  fifty  per  cent,,  and 
in  such  a  manner  that  creditors  were  wholly  unable  to  help 


GETTING  SOBER.  109 

themselves ;  for  by  terms  of  the  act  every  one  dollar  of  old 
legal  tender  was  now  made  two  for  all  new  legal-tender  pur- 
poses. In  this  way  the  people  on  the  island  soon  learned  a 
most  important  elementary  lesson  in  finance,  which  was,  that 
the  only  one  attribute  of  legal  tender  which  is  imperative 
and  unavoidable*  is  its  inherent  power  of  canceling  or  liqui- 
dating debts  or  of  tapping  creditors — and  this,  too,  irrespect- 
ive of  the  endowment  of  the  legal  tender  with  any  real  or 
representative  value.  So  that  a  truthful  designation  of  the 
act  in  question  would  have  been  "An  act  to  relieve  debtors 
from  half  of  their  obligations,  and  swindle  creditors  to  a  cor- 
responding extent  of  what  was  due  them  by  the  debtor's  ac- 
knowledgment." 

To  the  credit  of  the  people  of  the  island  it  must  be  record- 
ed that,  as  a  general  rule,  they  were  too  honorable  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  law  to  do  so  wrong  and  mean  a  thing  ;t  but 
the  knowledge  that  every  debtor  had  it  in  his  power  to  so  act, 

*  This  is  the  American  interpretation.  The  English  interpretation  of 
"  legal  tender "  -was  brought  out  in  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Lords,  in 
Juue,  1811,  when  it  was  shown  to  mean,  in  its  application  to  Great  Britain, 
no  more  than  this :  that  in  a  suit  between  creditor  and  debtor,  if  a  judg- 
ment went  against  the  debtor,  he  was  allowed  to  plead  a  tender  of  bank- 
notes in  arrest  of  execution,  but  ho  could  not  claim  that  the  notes  should 
be  forced  upon  the  creditor  in  discharge  of  the  debt.  During  the  long 
suspension  of  specie  payments  in  Great  Britain,  therefore,  bank-notes  were 
never  made  legal  tender  in  the  American  sense. 

t  After  the  Revolutionary  war  it  was  considered  disgraceful  to  take 
advantage  of  the  legal-tender  character  of  the  depreciated  Continental  or 
State  paper  money  to  liquidate  debts  with  it ;  and  the  Society  of  Cincin- 
nati expelled  a  member  for  so  doing.  The  State  of  Ehodo  Island  also, 
which  longer  than  any  of  the  other  States  endeavored  to  maintain  by  law 
the  legal-tender  character  and  use  of  such  money,  was  often  spoken  of  in 
consequence  as  "  Eogne's  "  in  place  of  "  Rhode  "  Island. 


110  MOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

and  tlie  fear  that  some  would  take  advantage  of  their  unques- 
tionable legal  privileges,  contributed  still  further  to  bring  all 
business  to  a  stand-still. 

There  was  also  a  curious  phenomenon  incident  to  the  situ- 
ation, and  pertaining  to  the  rate  of  interest,  which  excited  no 
little  comment  and  attention.  Every  body  took  it  for  granted 
that  with  an  unlimited  supply  of  money  a  low  rate  of  interest 
would  prevail,  and  that,  however  much  the  financiers  and  phi- 
losophers might  disagree  about  other  things,  this  one  result 
would  be  certain.  An  eminently  practical  man  in  one  of  the 
public  debating  societies  of  the  island  thought  he  had  defi- 
nitely, and  for  all  time,  settled  the  question  by  authoritatively 
remarking  that  "  an  abundance  of  money  does  produce  enter- 
prise, prosperity,  and  progress ;"  "  that  when  money  was  plen- 
ty interest  would  be  lower,"  just  as  when  horses  and  hogs  are 
abundant,  horses  and  hogs  would  be  cheap.  He,  for  one,  "  put 
aside  all  these  old  theories,  tliese  platitudes  of  finance."  There 
was  "  no  vitality  in  them."  He  preferred  "  to  take  the  actual 
results,  and  the  actual  condition  of  the  country,  and  let  theory 
go  to  the  dogs."* 

There  was  so  much  of  originality  and  home  sense  in  these 
remarks,  so  much  of  a  lordly  contemning  of  the  teachings  of 
musty  old  experience,  that  the  friends  of  the  orator  thought 
him  much  more  worthy  than  ever  of  the  executive  chair  for- 
merly filled  by  the  wise  Robinson  Crusoe.  But,  unfortunately 
for  the  orator,  he  hadn't  got  far  enough  along  in  his  financial 
primer  to  appreciate  the  difference  between  capital  and  cur- 
rency ;  and  in  the  simplicity  of  his  heart  imagined  that  it  was 

*  To  any  who  may  desire  to  know  how  far  imagination  has  been  drawn 
upon  for  this  picture,  reference  is  made  to  the  speech  of  Hon.  O.  P.  Morton, 
United  States  Senate,  "  Congressional  Eecord,"  vol.  ii.,  part  i.,  Forty-third 
Congress,  First  Session,  j>.  669. 


GETTING  SOBER.  HI 

all  the  same,  whether  we  had  pictures  of  horses,  hogs,  and 
money,  or  real  horses,  hogs,  and  money,  which  represent  and 
are  accumulated  by  labor.  So  the  things  which  he  thus  settled 
in  opposition  to  theory  and  experience  wouldn't  stay  settled ; 
and  the  islanders  in  due  time  came  to  a  realizing  sense  of  the 
following  truths :  that  the  more  of  a  redundant,  irredeemable 
paper  that  is  issued,  the  more  it  depreciates,  and  the  more  it  is 
depreciated,  the  more  there  is  required  of  it  to  transact  busi- 
ness ;  and  that  if  any  one  borrows  depreciated  money  to  do 
any  thing,  he  has  to  borrow  a  greater  nominal  amount  than  he 
would  of  money  that  was  not  depreciated ;  and  that  it  is  on 
the  number  of  nominal  dollars,  and  not  on  their  purchasing 
power,  that  the  rate  of  interest  is  alw^ays  calculated.  The  in- 
variable rise  in  prices  consequent  on  the  depreciation  of  mon- 
ey (price  as  already  explained  being  the  purchasing  power  of 
any  commodity  or  service  expressed  in  money),  furthermore 
stimulates  borrowing  for  the  purpose  of  speculation ;  and  the 
more  borrowers,  the  more  competition  ;  and  the  more  the  com- 
petition to  obtain  an  article  or  service,  the  higher  the  price  de- 
manded for  it. 

Again,  the  currency  of  the  island  having  been  made  artifi- 
cially abundant,  its  exchangeable  value  was  always  uncertain  ; 
and  capital,  tlierefore,  as  it  always  does  at  such  times,  locked 
up  its  pockets,  hesitated  to  take  risks,  and,  if  it  consented  to 
loan  at  all,  demanded  extra  pay  by  reason  of  the  increased 
risk  or  induced  scarcity.* 

*  The  pertinacity  with  which  a  mind  hefogged  on  the  subject  of  money 
and  currency  holds  on  to  the  delusion  that  the  making  and  issue  of  prom- 
ises to  pay,  and  calling  the  same  money,  is  equivalent  to  the  creation  of 
wealth  ;  and,  vice  versa,  that  the  cancellation  or  withdrawal,  by  payment, 
of  such  promises  is  the  same  thing  as  the  destruction  of  wealth,  and  also 
tends  to  make  money — in  the  sense  of  capital — scarce,  and  interest  high, 


112  BOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 

After  testing  all  these  principles  experimentally  for  a  con- 
siderable time,  the  people  on  the  island  came  to  see  that  the 

finds  many  amusing  illustrations,  which  for  educational  purposes  are  bet- 
ter than  arguments. 

For  example,  we  have,  first,  the  assumption  of  a  leading  Senator  of  the 
United  States  (already  referred  to,  and  which,  if  not  on  record,  would  seem 
incredible)  that  because  an  increased  supply  of  horses  and  hogs  made 
available  to  a  market  make  horses  and  hogs  cheap,  therefore  an  increased 
supply  of  evidences  that  capital  had  been  borrowed,  used,  and  never  paid, 
would  tend  to  increase  the  quantity  and  rate  of  interest  of  loanable  capi- 
tal. A  corresponding  illustration  is  also  to  be  found  in  the  case  of  the 
member  of  the  Continental  Congress  mentioned  by  Pelatiah  Webster,  who, 
when  the  subject  of  increased  taxation  for  the  support  of  the  war  was  un- 
der consideration,  indignantly  asked  "  if  he  was  expected  to  help  tax  the 
people,  when  they  could  go  to  the  printing-office  and  get  money  by  the 
cart-load  ?" 

The  experience  of  the  Irish  mob  also  finds  an  appropriate  place  under 
this  head,  which  made  a  bonfire  of  all  the  notes  issued  by  an  obnoxious 
private  banker  that  they  could  gather,  little  imagining,  as  they  shouted 
and  capered  with  wild  delight  about  the  fire  that  consumed  them,  that,  in 
place  of  impoverishing,  they  were  really  enriching,  their  enemy. 

The  following  story,  also  illustrative  of  the  same  popular  fallacy,  passes 
current  in  one  of  the  towns  of  Eastern  Connecticut :  During  the  severe 
financial  panic  of  1857,  an  honest  country  farmer  and  deacon,  who,  by  virtue 
of  being  a  considerable  stockholder  in  one  of  the  local  banks,  had  been 
placed  as  a  figure-head  on  its  board  of  directors,  was  applied  to  by  a  farmer 
friend  to  heliJ  him  in  procuring  from  the  bank  a  small  loan.  Knowing  that 
the  times  were  hard,  and  money  scarce,  the  deacon,  although  desirous  of 
obliging  his  friend,  did  not  at  once  commit  himself,  but  promised  to  go  to 
the  bank,  and  make  his  action  contingent  upon  the  state  of  affairs  which  he 
might  there  find.  The  two  friends,  accordingly,  went  into  town  the  next  day 
(which  happened  to  be  the  culminating  day  of  the  crisis,  when  every  prom- 
ise to  pay  issued  by  any  bank  was,  in  the  general  distrust,  gathered  up  and 
rushed  in  for  redemption) ;  and,  while  the  applicant  for  the  loan  waited 
outside,  the  director  entered  the  bank  to  reconnoitre.  Passing  into  the 
directors'  room,  and  thence  behind  the  counter,  he  said  little,  but,  keeping 


GETTING  SOBER.  113 

possession  of  money  was  the  consequence  rather  than  the 
cause  of  wealth ;  and  that,  except  under  special  circumstances 
and  conditions,  the  rate  of  interest  depends  on  the  abundance 
or  scarcity  of  that  part  of  the  capital  of  a  community  which 
does  not  consist  of  money ;  and  that  it  can  not  be  permanent- 
ly lowered  by  any  inci-ease  in  the  quantity  of  money.* 

In  this  way,  through  the  school  of  hard  experience,  the  peo- 
ple on  the  island  came  gradually  to  understand  that  there 
were  certain  economic  truths  which  had  got  to  be  accepted 
and  lived  up  to  in  order  to  insure  either  individual  or  nation- 
al prosperity.     They  came  to  understand  that  property  is  a 


his  eyes  wide  opeu,  did  not  fail  to  notice  the  extraordinarily  large  pack- 
ages of  bills,  filling  safe  and  drawers,  wnich,  to  the  annoyance  and  strain 
of  the  bank,  had  been  recently  sent  in  for  payment.  Seeking  no  further 
proof  of  the  financial  strength  of  his  institution,  he  returned  to  the  street, 
and,  informing  his  friend  that  every  thing  was  all  right,  the  latter  nest 
entered,  and  confidently  asked  for  his  discount.  To  his  great  surprise,  he 
received  the  usual  polite  answer,  that  "  they  would  be  too  glad  to  oblige 
him,  but  that,  really,  they  had  no  money."  "  Out  of  money !"  said  the  dea- 
con, when  the  result  of  the  application  was  made  known  to  him.  "  Out  of 
money!  How  can  they  lie  so,  when  I  have  just  seen  the  safe  and  draw- 
ers full  of  it?  As  a  Christian  man,  and  an  officer  of  the  church,  I  can't 
conscientiously  be  a  director  and  stockholder  any  longer  in  such  an  im- 
moral institution."  And  yet,  if,  on  returning  home,  the  good  deacon  had 
found  in  his  table-drawer  a  number  of  his  individual  promissory-notes, 
signed  and  ready  to  issue,  but  not  issued,  he  would  not  have  thought  him- 
self any  richer  by  their  existence,  but,  on  the  contrary,  would  have  felt 
much  more  comfortable  at  such  a  time  to  know  that  the  notes  were  all  un- 
der double-lock  security,  or,  better,  if  he  saw  them  vanishing  into  ashes. 
And  yet,  in  the  case  of  the  bank-notes,  he  couldn't  understand  why  they 
were  not  money,  to  be  used  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances ! 

*  Between  the  years  1860  and  1870,  the  United  States  doubled  tlie  quan- 
tity of  currency  available  for  use  by  its  citizens,  and  yet  the  rate  of  inter- 
est was  as  high  in  the  latter  year  as  in  the  former. 

8 


114r  EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY.     . 

physical  actuality,  the  result  of  some  form  of  labor ;  that  cap- 
ital is  that  portion  of  the  results  of  production  which  can  be 
reserved  and  made  available  for  new  and  further  production ; 
that  money  is  an  instrumentality  for  facilitating  the  distribu- 
tion and  use  of  capital  and  the  interchange  of  products  and 
services;  that  production  alone  buys  production;  that  when 
one  buys  goods  with  a  paper  representative  or  symbol  of  mon- 
ey, the  goods  are  not  paid  for  until  the  representative  is  sub- 
stituted by  a  value  of  some  sort  in  labor,  or  money,  or  some 
other  commodity ;  and,  finally,  that  a  country  and  its  inhabit- 
ants increase  in  wealth  or  abundance  by  increasing  their  prod- 
ucts, rather  than  by  inordinately  multiplying  machinery  for 
the  exchange  of  products.  They  also  saw  that  the  promises 
to  pay  which  they  had  been  using  and  regarding  as  money 
were  debts ;  and  that  debts,  as  well  as  all  other  forms  of  title, 
are  but  shadows  of  the  property  they  represent ;  and  that,  in 
endeavoring  to  all  get  rich  by  first  creating  debts,  then  calling 
the  debts  money,  and  the  money  wealth,  they  had  been  led, 
successively,  into  speculation,  extravagance,  idleness,  and  im- 
poverishment ;  and,  like  the  dog  in  the  fable,  which  let  go  of 
the  meat  in  crossing  a  stream  for  the  sake  of  grasping  its  shad- 
ow, they  had  lost  much  of  real  wealth  resulting  from  previous 
industry  by  trying  to  make  the  shadow  of  wealth  supply  the 
place  of  its  substance. 

Coming  to  gradually  realize,  also,  that  one  of  the  first  requi- 
sites for  an  increase  of  trade  was  that  confidence  should  exist 
between  the  buyer  and  the  seller,  but  that  such  confidence  nev- 
er would  exist  so  long  as  the  representatives  of  value,  or  other 
intermediate  agencies  made  use  of  for  facilitating  exchanges, 
were  of  an  uncertain,  fluctuating  character,  they  also  came 
finally  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  no  economy  in  using 
cheap  money ;  or,  in  other  words,  that  the  loss  and  waste  in- 


GETTING  SOBER. 


115 


THE  HUNGRY  DOG  AND  THE  SHADOW. 

Grasp  at  the  Shadow  and  lose  the  Substance. 

evitably  resulting  from  the  use  of  poor  tools  (money  being  a 
tool)  was  many  times  in  excess  of  the  interest  accruing  from 
any  increased  cost  of  good  tools.  So  reasoning,  gold,  or  un- 
doubted promises  to  pay  gold,  gradually  came  once  more  into 
use  as  money  on  the  island. 


116  EOBIXSOX  CEUSOE'S  MONEY. 

There  were  some  prophecies,  and  a  good  deal  of  apprehen- 
sion, that  there  would  be  difficulty  experienced  in  obtaining 
sufficient  gold  to  serve  as  money  or  as  a  basis  for  currency, 
especially  when  it  was  remembered  that  the  influence  of  all 
that  had  recently  happened  had  been  to  encourage  the  export 
of  all  the  gold  that  was  owned  or  produced  on  the  island. 
But  as  the  goldsmiths  and  the  jewelers  never  experienced  any 
difficulty  during  the  war  with  the  cannibals,  or  afterward,  in 
obtaining  all  the  gold  they  wanted,  no  matter  how  scarce  and 
valuable  it  was  as  compared  with  currency,  and  could  have 
had  a  hundred  times  more  than  they  actually  used,  if  their 
customers  had  been  willing  to  pay  for  it ;  so  the  merchants, 
traders,  and  people  at  large  on  the  island,  as  soon  as  they  be- 
came satisfied  that  it  was  economical  to  use  gold,  and  deter- 
mined to  have  it,  experienced  no  difficulty  in  obtaining  an 
ample  supply. 

One  circumstance  which,  pending  this  result,  tended  to 
greatly  relieve  the  popular  apprehension  on  this  score,  was 
the  reading  in  foreign  newspapers  that  the  people  in  certain 
comparatively  poor  countries  —  as  Oregon,  Arizona,  Nevada, 
and  Washington  Territory — had  no  more  difficulty  in  obtain- 
ing and  retaining  all  the  gold  that  they  found  it  desirable  to 
use  for  the  purpose  of  money,  than  they  had  in  obtaining  and 
retaining  all  the  wheelbarrows  and  steam-engines  that  they 
desired  to  use  in  conducting  their  business ;  and  laughed 
when  any  body  talked  of  depriving  them  of  their  gold  money. 

The  first  step  having  been  thus  taken  in  the  right  direction, 
a  sequence  of  other  proper  acts  occurred  as  naturally  and 
with  the  same  f avomble  results  as  in  the  celebrated  case  of 
the  old  woman  and  the  kid  ;  in  which  it  will  be  remembered 
that  as  soon  as  the  water  began  to  quench  the  fire,  the  fire 


GETTING  SOBER.  117 

began  to  burn  the  stick,  the  stick  began  to  beat  the  dog,  tlie 
dog  began  to  bite  the  kid,  and,  as  a  consequence  of  this  se- 
quence and  its  concluding  act,  the  old  woman  got  safely  home 
with  the  kid,  though  at  a  period  of  the  evening  much  later 
than  was  desirable  or  proper.  And  so,  by  a  succession  of 
events,  prosperity  slowly  but  surely  came  back  to  the  island. 

As  for  the  Friends  of  Humanity,  who  had  been  the  authors 
of  so  much  financial  and  commercial  disturbance  and  national 
misfortune,  they  soon  ceased  to  command  attention  from  any 
one,  then  became  objects  of  laughter  and  derision,  and  finally 
passed  out  of  the  remembrance  of  the  people,  who  were  now 
all  too  busy  in  restoring  their  fortunes  to  give  a  thought  to  by- 
gone and  mortifying  experiences.  Some  became  convinced 
of  their  errors,  and  made  good  citizens ;  but  in  the  case  of 
the  majority,  the  belief  that  the  calling  of  things  of  no  intrin- 
sic value  by  the  name  of  money  was  equivalent  to  the  creation 
of  wealth,  became  chronic,  and  finally  developed  into  a  harm- 
less insanity.  On  pleasant  days  they  might  often  be  seen  on 
the  corners  of  the  streets  gathering  leaves  and  bits  of  sticks  and 
straws,  and  telling  the  children  that  assembled  about  them 
that  all  that  was  necessary  to  make  these  worthless  gatherings 
money  was  to  simply  have  confidence  that  they  were  so.  But 
this  was  asking  for  a  simplicity  of  belief  that  was  a  little  too 
much,  even  for  the  children. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that,  as  memorials  of  this  eventful 
history,  there  is  still  exhibited  in  one  of  the  public  buildings 
on  the  island  an  exact  model  of  the  cave  in  which  the  vener- 
able Robinson  Crusoe  dwelt,  and,  what  is  even  more  interest- 
ing, the  identical  chest  which  he  brought  from  the  ship,  and 
which  contained  the  pins,  needles,  knives,  cloth,  and  scissors, 
and  the  three  great  bags  of  what  was  then  useless,  but  now 


118 


EOBINSON  CRUSOE'S  MONEY. 


good  and  true,  money.  Numerous  specimens  of  the  "  ideal 
money  "  may  also  be  seen  in  the  same  room,  together  with  a 
picture  of  the  barber  who  papered  his  shop  with  it,  and  of  the 
dog  which  the  people  paraded  in  the  streets  covered  .with  a 
plaster  of  pitch  and  currency.* 

*  Sncli  were  some  of  the  uses  fiually  made  of  the  Continental  currency. 
See  Sumner's  "  History  of  American  Currency,"  p.  46. 


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Divinity,  Cambridge.    Second  Edition,  Revised.    196  pp. 
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5^. 


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4      Harper  6^  Brothers'  Valuable  and  Interesting  Works. 


DRAPER'S  CIVIL  WAR.  History  of  the  American  Civil  War.  By  John  W.  Dka. 
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BROD  HEAD'S  HISTORY  OF  NEW  YORK.  History  of  the  State  of  New  York. 
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BULWER'S  HORACE.  The  Odes  and  Epodes  of  Horace.  A  Metrical  Translation 
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by  Robert  Chambeea.    4  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $6  00. 

REINDEER,  DOGS,  AND  SNOW-SHOES.  A  Journal  of  Siberian  Travel  and  Ex- 
plorations made  in  the  Years  18G5-'67.  By  Richard  J.  Bush,  late  of  the  Russo- 
American  Telegraph  Expedition.    Illustrated.    Crown  Svo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

CARLYLE'S  FREDERICK  THE  GREAT.  History  of  Friedrich  II.,  called  Frederick 
the  Great.  By  Tuomab  Caelyle.  Portraits,  Maps,  Plans,  &c.  6  vols.,  12mo, 
Cloth,  $12  00. 

CARLYLE'S  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  History  of  the  French  Revolution.  Newly 
Revised  by  the  Author,  with  Index,  &c.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

CARLYLE'S  OLIVER  CROMWELL.  Letters  and  Speeches  of  Oliver  Cromwell. 
With  Elucidations  and  Connecting  Narrative.    2  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

CHALMERS'S  POSTHUMOUS  WORKS.  The  Posthumous  Works  of  Dr.  Chalmers. 
Edited  by  his  Sou-in-Law,  Rev.  William  Hanna,  LL.D.  Complete  in  9  vols., 
12mo,  Cloth,  $13  50. 

COLERIDGE'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Complete  Works  of  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge.  With  an  Introductory  Essay  upon  his  Philosophical  and  Theological 
Opinions.  Edited  by  Professor  "Shedd.  Complete  in  Seven  Vols.  With  a  fine 
Portrait.    Small  Svo,  Cloth,  $10  50. 

DOOLITTLE'S  CHINA.  Social  Life  of  the  Chinese :  with  some  Account  of  their  Re- 
ligious, Governmental,  Educational,  and  Business  Customs  and  Opinions.  With 
special  but  not  exclusive  Reference  to  Fuhchau.  By  Rev.  Justus  Doolittlj:, 
Fourteen  Years  Member  of  the  Fuhchau  Mission  of  the  American  Board.  Illus- 
trated with  more  than  150  characteristic  Engravings  on  Wood.  2  vols.,  12mo, 
Cloth,  $5  00. 

GIBBON'S  ROME.  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  By  En- 
wart>  Gibuon.  With  Notes  by  Rev.  H.  H.  Milman  and  M.  Gcizot.  A  new  cheap 
Edition.  To  which  is  added  a  complete  Index  of  the  whole  Work,  and  a  Portrait 
of  the  Author.    6  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $9  00. 

HAZEN'S  SCHOOL  AND  ARMY  IN  GERMANY  AND  FRANCE.  The  School 
and  the  Army  in  Germany  and  France,  with  a  Diary  of  Siege  Life  at  Versail!<5s. 
By  Brevet  Major-General  W.  B.  Hazen,  U.S.A.,  Colonel  Sixth  Infantry.  Crown 
Svo,  Cloth,  |2  50. 


Harper  df  Brothers'  Valuable  and  Interesting  Works.      5 


HARPEK'S  NEW  CLASSICAL  LIBRARY.    Literal  Translations. 

The  following  Volumes  are  now  ready.  Portraits.  12mo,  Cloth,  $1  50  each. 
C^8ae.—Viegil.  —  Sai,i,tjst. —Horace.— CiCERo'8  Orations— Cioeuo's  Offkiebi 
&C.— CiOERO  ON  Oratory  and  Orators.- Taoitus  (2  vols.). -Terence. — 
SoPUOOLES. — Jitvenal.— Xenopuon.-  Homer's  Iliad. — Homer's  Odyssey.— 
Herodotus. — Demosthenes. — Tuuoydlde8.—.^8chylt:8.— Euripides  (2  vols.). 
— LiTY  (2  vols.). 

DAVIS'S  CARTHAGE.  Carthage  and  her  Remains  :  being  an  Account  of  the  Exca- 
vations and  Researches  on  the  Site  of  the  Phoenician  Metropolis  in  Africa  and  other 
adjacent  Places.  Conducted  under  the  Auspices  of  Her  Majesty's  Government. 
By  Dr.  Davis,  F.R.G.S.  Profusely  Illustrated  with  Maps,  Woodcuts,  Chromo- 
Lithographs,  &c.    8vo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

EDGEWORTH'S  (Miss)  NOVELS.   With  Engravings.    10  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $15  00. 

GROTE'S  HISTORY  OF  GREECE.    12  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $18  00. 

HELPS'S  SPANISH  CONQUEST.  The  Spanish  Conquest  in  America,  and  its  Rela- 
tion  to  the  History  of  Slavery  and  to  the  Government  of  Colonies.  By  Artiiux 
Helps.    4  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $6  00. 

HALE'S  (Mrs.)  WOMAN'S  RECORD.  Woman's  Record ;  or.  Biographical  Sketches 
of  all  Distinguished  Women,  from  the  Creation  to  the  Present  Time.  Arranged 
in  Four  Eras,  with  Selections  from  Female  Writers  of  each  Era.  By  Mrs.  Sarah 
Josepha  Hale.    Illustrated  with  more  than  200  Portraits.    8vo,  Cloth,  $5  00. 

HALL'S  ARCTIC  RESEARCHES.-  Arctic  Researches  and  Life  among  the  Esqul. 
maux :  being  the  Narrative  of  an  Expedition  in  Search  of  Sir  John  Franklin,  in 
the  Years  18G0. 1861,  and  1862.  By  Cuaeles  Francis  Hall.  With  Maps  and  100 
Illustrations.  The  Illustrations  are  from  Original  Drawings  by  Charles  Parsons, 
Henry  L.  Stephens,  Solomon  Eytinge,  W.  S.  L.  Jewett,  and  Granville  Perkins, 
after  Sketches  by  Captain  Hall.    8vo,  Cloth,  $5  00. 

HALLAM'S  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND,  from  the  Accession  of 
Henry  VIL  to  the  Death  of  George  IL    Svo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

HALLAM'S  LITERATURE.  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe  during  the 
Fifteenth,  Sixteenth,  and  Seventeenth  Centuries.  By  Henry  Hallam.  2  vols., 
Svo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

HALLAM'S  MIDDLE  AGES.  State  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages.  By  Henet 
Hallam.    8vo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

ETILDRETH'S  HISTORY  OP  THE  UNITED  STATES.  First  Series  :  From  the 
First  Settlement  of  the  Country  to  the  Adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution. 
Second  Series  :  From  the  Adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  to  the  End  of 
the  Sixteenth  Congress.    6  vols.,  8vo,  Cloth,  $18  00. 

HUME'S  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  History  of  "England,  from  the  Invasion  of  Ju- 
lius Cffisar  to  the  Abdication  of  James  II.,  KiSS.  By  David  Hume.  A  new  Edi- 
tion, with  the  Author's  last  Corrections  and  Improv.ements.  To  which  is  Prefix- 
ed a  short  Account  of  his  Life,  written  by  Himself.  With  a  Portrait  of  the  Au- 
thor.   6  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $9  00. 

JAY'S  WORKS.  Complete  Works  of  Rev.  William  Jay:  comprising  his  Sermons, 
Family  Discourses,  Morning  and  Evening  Exercises  for  every  Day  in  the  Year, 
Family  Prayers,  &c.  Author's  enlarged  Edition,  revised.  3  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth, 
$6  00. 

JEFFERSON'S  DOMESTIC  LIFE.  The  Domestic  Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson  :  com- 
piled from  Family  Letters  and  Reminiscences  by  his  Great-Grauddau<rhter, 
Sarah  N.  Randolph.  With  Illustrations.  Crown  8vo,  Illuminated  Cloth,  Bev- 
eled Edges,  $2  50. 

JOHNSON'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Works  of  Samuel  Johnson,  LL.D.  With 
an  Essay  on  his  Life  and  Genius,  by  Arthur  Murphy,  Esq.  Portrait  of  Johnson. 
2  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

EINGLAKE'S  CRIMEAN  WAR.  The  Invasion  of  the  Crimea,  and  an  Account  of 
its  Progress  down  to  the  Death  of  Lord  Raglan.  By  Alexander  William  King- 
lake.    With  Maps  and  Plans.  Three  Vols,  ready.   12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00  per  vol. 

EINGSLEY'S  WEST  INDIES.  At  Last:  A  Christmas  in  the  West  Indies.  By 
Charles  Kingsley.    Illustrated.    12mo,  Cloth,  $1  50. 


6     Harper  &*  Brothers'  Valuable  and  Interesting  Works. 

KRUMMACHER'S  DAVID,  KING  OF  ISRAEL.  David,  the  King  of  Israel :  a  Por- 
trait drawn  from  Bible  History  and  the  Book  of  Psalms.  By  Feedeeiok  William 
Kbtjmmaouek,  D.D.,  Author  of  "Elijah  the  Tishbite,"  &c.  Translated  under  the 
express  Sanction  of  the  Author  by  the  Rev.  M.  G.  Eabton,  M.A.  With  a  Letter 
from  Dr.  Krummacher  to  his  American  Readers,  and  a  Portrait.  12mo,  Cloth, 
$1T5. 

LAMB'S  COMPLETE  WORKS.  The  Works  of  Charles  Lamb.  Comprising  his  Let- 
ters, Poems,  Essays  of  Elia,  Essays  upon  Shakspeare,  Hogarth,  &c.,  and  a  Sketch 
of  his  Life,  with  the  Final  Memorials,  by  T.  Noon  Talfouru.  Portrait.  2  vols., 
12mo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

LIVINGSTONE'S  SOUTH  AFRICA.  Missionary  Travels  and  Researches  in  South 
Africa ;  including  a  Sketch  of  Sixteen  Years'  Residence  in  the  Interior  of  Africa, 
and  a  Journey  from  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  to  Loando  on  the  West  Coast ;  thence 
across  the  Continent,  down  the  River  Zambesi,  to  the  Eastern  Ocean.  By  David 
Livingstone,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  With  Portrait,  Maps  by  Arrowsmith,  and  numerous 
Illustrations.    8vo,  Cloth,  $4  50. 

LIVINGSTONES'  ZAMBESI.  Narrative  of  an  Expedition  to  the  Zambesi  and  its 
Tributaries,  and  of  the  Discovery  of  the  Lakes  Shirwa  and  Nyassa.  1868  - 1864. 
By  David  and  Chables  Livingstone.  With  Map  and  Illustrations.  8vo,  Cloth, 
$5  00. 

M'CLINTOCK  &  STRONG'S  CYCLOPEDIA.  Cyclopedia  of  Biblical,  Theological, 
and  Ecclesiastical  Literature.  Prepared  by  the  Rev.  John  M'Clintook,  D.D., 
and  Jameb  Strong,  S.T.D.  5  vols,  nmn  ready.  Royal  Svo.  Price  per  vol..  Cloth, 
$5  00  ;  Sheep,  $6  00 ;  Half  Morocco,  $S  00. 

MARCY'S  ARMY  LIFE  ON  THE  BORDER.  Thirty  Years  of  Army  Life  on  the 
Border.  Comprising  Descriptions  of  the  Indian  Nomads  of  the  Plains ;  Explo- 
rations of  New  Territory ;  a  Trip  across  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  the  Winter ; 
Descriptions  of  the, Habits  of  Different  Animals  found  in  the  West,  and  the  Meth- 
ods of  Hunting  them ;  with  Incidents  in  the  Life  of  Different  Frontier  Men,  &c., 
&c.  By  Brevet  Brigadier-General  R.  B.  Makoy,  U.S.A.,  Author  of  "The  Prairie 
"Traveller."    With  numerous  Illustrations.    Svo,  Cloth,  Beveled  Edges,  $3  00. 

MACAULAY'S  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  The  History  of  England  from  the  Ac- 
cession of  James  II.  By  Thomas  Babington  Maoaulay.  With  an  Original  Por- 
trait of  the  Author.    5  vols.,  8vo,  Cloth,  $10  00 ;  12mo,  Cloth,  $7  50. 

MOSHEIM'S  ECCLESIASTICAL  HISTORY,  Ancient  and  Modem  ;  in  which  the 
Rise,  Progress,  and  Variation  of  Church  Power  are  considered  in  their  Connec- 
tion withlhe  State  of  Learning  and  Philosophy,  and  the  Political  History  of  Eu- 
rope during  that  Period.  Translated,  with  Notes,  &c.,  by  A.  Maclaine,  D.D, 
A  new  Edition,  continued  to  1826,  by  C.  Coote,  LL.D.    2  vols.,  Svo,  Cloth,  $4  00. 

NEVIUS'S  CHINA.  China  and  the  Chinese:  a  General  Description  of  the  Country 
and  its  Inhabitants ;  its  Civilization  and  Form  of  Government ;  its  Religious  and 
Social  Institutions ;  its  Intercourse  with  other  Nations ;  and  its  Present  Condition 
and  Prospects.  By  the  Rev.  John  L.  NETirs,  Ten  Years  a  Missionary  in  China. 
With  a  Map  and  Illustrations.    12mo,  Cloth,  $1  75. 

THE  DESERT  OF  THE  EXODUS.  Journeys  on  Foot  in  the  Wilderness  of  the 
Forty  Years'  Wanderings ;  undertaken  in  connection  with  the  Ordnance  Survey 
of  Sinai  and  the  Palestine  Exploration  Fund.  By  E.  H.  Palmer,  M.A.,  Lord 
Almoner's  Professor  of  Arabic,  and  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge. 
With  Maps  and  numerous  Illustrations  from  PhotoCTaphs  and  Drawings  taken 
on  the  spot  by  the  Sinai  Survey  Expedition  and  C.  P.  Tyrwhitt  Drake.  Crown 
Svo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

OLIPHANT'S  CHINA  AND  JAPAN.  Narrative  of  the  Earl  of  Elgin's  Mission  to 
China  and  Japan,  in  the  Years  1857,  '5S,  '59.  By  Laurence  Oliphant,  Private 
Secretary  to  Lord  Elgin.    Illustrations.    Svo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

OLIPHANT'S  (Mrs.)  LIFE  OF  EDWARD  IRVING.  The  Life  of  Edward  Irving, 
Minister  of  the  National  Scotch  Church,  London.  Illustrated  by  his  Journals  and 
Correspondence.    By  Mrs.  Oliphant.    Portrait.    Svo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

RAWLINSON'S  MANUAL  OF  ANCIENT  HISTORY.  A  Manual  of  Ancient  His- 
tory, from  the  Earliest  Times  to  the  Fall  of  the  Western  Empire.  Comprising 
the  History  of  Chaldaa,  Assyria,  Media,  Babylonia,  Lydia,  Phoenicia,  Syria,  Ju- 
dcea,  E^ypt,  Carthage,  Persia,  Greece,  Macedonia,  Parthia,  and  Rome.  By 
Geoboe^Rawllnson,  M.  A.,  Camden  Professor  of  Ancient  History  in  the  Univer- 
sity  of  Oxford.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  50. 


Harper  <5^•  Brothers'  Valuable  and  Interesting  Works.       7 

RECLUS'S  THE  EARTH.  The  Earth :  a  Descriptive  History  of  tlie  Pheuomena 
aud  Life  of  the  Globe.  By  Ei.isee  Reolus.  Translated  by  the  late  B,  B.Wood- 
ward, aad  Edited  by  Henry  Woodward.  With  234  Maps  and  Illustrations,  and 
23  Page  Maps  printed  in  Colors.     Svo,  Cloth,  $5  00. 

RECLUS'S  OCEAN.  The  Ocean,  Atmosphere,  and  Life.  Being  the  Second  Series 
of  a  Descriptive  History  of  the  Life  of  the  Globe.  By  ^^lis^k  Reclus.  Pro- 
fusely Illustrated  with  250  Maps  or  Figures,  and  27  Maps  printed  in  Colors. 
Svo,  Cloth,  $6  00. 

SHAKSPEARE.  The  Dramatic  Works  of  William  Shakspeare,  with  the  Correc- 
tions and  Illustrations  of  Dr.  Jounson  G.  Stbevens,  and  others.  Revised  by 
Isaac  Reed.    Engravings.    6  vols.,  Royal  12mo,  Cloth,  $9  00. 

SMILES'S  LIFE  OF  THE  STEPHENSONS.  The  Life  of  George  Stephenson,  and 
of  his  Son,  Robert  Stephenson ;  comprising,  also,  a  History  of  the  Invention 
and  Introduction  of  the  Railway  Locomotive.  By  Samuel  Smiles.  With  Steel 
Portraits  and  numerous  Illustrations.    Svo,  Cloth,  $3  00. 

SMILES'S  HISTORY  OF  THE  HUGUENOTS.  The  Huguenots :  their  Settlements, 
Churches,  and  Industries  in  England  and  Ireland.  By  Samuel  Smiles.  With  an 
Appendix  relating  to  the  Huguenots  in  America.    Crown  Svo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

SPEKE'S  AFRICA.  Journal  of  the  Discovery  of  the  Source  of  the  Nile.  By  Cap- 
tain JouN  Hannino  Speke.  With  Maps  and  Portraits  and  numerous  Illustra- 
tions, chiefly  from  Drawings  by  Captain  Geant.  Svo,  Cloth,  uuiform  with  Liv- 
ingstone, Barth,  Burton,  &c.,  $4  00. 

STRICKLAND'S  (Miss)  QUEENS  OF  SCOTLAND.  Lives  of  the  Queens  of  Scot- 
laud  and  English  Princesses  connected  with  the  Regal  Succession  of  Great 
Britain.    By  Agnes  Strioklanu.    S  vols.,  12mo,  Cloth,  $12  00. 

THE  STUDENT'S  SERIES. 

France.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Gibbon.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Greece.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  12  00. 

Hume.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Rome.    By  Liddell.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Old  Testament  History.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

New  Testament  History.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Strickland's  Queens  of  England.    Abridged.    Engravings.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Ancient  History  of  the  East.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Hallam's  Middle  Ages.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Hallam's  Constitutional  History  of  England.    12mo,  Cloth,  $2  00. 

Lyell's  Elements  of  Geology.    12mo,  Cloth,  ?2  00. 

TENNYSON'S  COMPLETE  POEMS.  The  Complete  Poems  of  Alfred  Tennyson, 
Poet  Laureate.  With  numerous  Illustrations  by  Eminent  Artists,  aud  Three 
Characteristic  Portraits.    Svo,  Paper,  75  cents;  Cloth,  %\  25. 

THOMSON'S  LAND  AND  THE  BOOK.  The  Land  and  the  Book :  or,  Biblical 
Illustrations  drawn  from  the  Manners  and  Customs,  the  Scenes  and  tlie  Scenery 
of  the  Holy  Land.  By  W.  M.  Thomson,  D.D.,  Twenty-five  Years  a  Missionary 
of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  in  Syria  and  Palestine.-  With  two  elaborate  Maps  of  Pal- 
estine, an  accurate  Plan  of  Jerusalem,  and  several  hundred  Engravings,  repre- 
senting the  Scenery,  Topography,  and  Productions  of  the  Holy  Land,  and  the 
Costumes,  Manners,  aud  Habits  of  the  People.    2  large  12mo  vols..  Cloth,  $5  00. 

TYERMAN'S  WESLEY.  The  Life  and  Times  of  the  Rev.  John  Wesley,  M.A., 
Pounder  of  the  Methodists.  By  the  Rev.  Luke  Tyekman.  Portraits.  3  vols.. 
Crown  Svo,  Cloth,  $7  50. 

TYERMAN'S  OXFORD  METHODISTS.  The  Oxford  Methodists :  Memoirs  of  the 
Rev.  Messrs.  Clayton,  Ingham,  Gambold,  Hervey,  and  Broughton,  with  Bio- 
graphical Notices  of  others.  By  the  Rev.  L.  Tyekman.   Crown  Svo,  Cloth,  $2  50. 

VAMBfiRY'S  CENTRAL  ASIA.  Travels  in  Central  Asia.  Being  the  Account  of 
a  Journey  from  Teheran  across  the  Turkoman  Desert,  on  the  Eastern  Shore  of 
the  Caspian,  to  Khiva,  Bokhara,  and  Samarcand,  performed  in  the  Year  1S63. 
By  Akminiub  VAmb^rt,  Member  of  the  Hungarian  Academy  of  Pesth,  by  whom 
he  was  sent  on  this  Scientific  Mission.  With  Map  and  Woodcuts.  Svo,  Cloth, 
$4  50. 

WOOD'S  HOMES  WITHOUT  HANDS.  Homes  Without  Hands:  being  a  Descrip- 
tion  of  the  Habitations  of  Animals,  classed  according  to  their  Principle  of  Con- 
struction. By  J.  G.  Wood,  M.A.,  F.L.S.  With  about  140  Illustrations.  Svo, 
Cloth,  Beveled  Edges,  $4  50. 


HARPER'S  CATALOGUE. 


Harper's  Catalogue  comprises  a  large  proportion  of  the  standard  and 
most  esteemed  works  in  English  and  Classical  Literature — comprehend- 
ing OVER  THREE  THOUSAND  VOLUMES — which  are  offered,  in  most  in- 
stances, at  less  than  one  half  the  cost  of  similar  productions  in  England. 

To  Librarians  and  others  connected  with  Colleges,  Schools,  &c.,  who 
may  not  have  access  to  a  trustworthy  guide  in  forming  the  true  estimate  of 
literary  productions,  it  is  believed  this  Catalogue,  with  its  classified  and 
analytical  Index,  will  prove  especially  valuable  for  reference. 

To  prevent  disappointment,  it  is  suggested  that,  whenever  books  can 
not  be  obtained  through  a  bookseller  or  local  agent,  applications  with 
remittance  should  be  addressed  direct  to  Harper  &  Brothers,  which  will 
receive  prompt  attention. 


Se7tt  by  mail  on  receipt  of  Ten  Cents. 

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